Snoopy vs the Red Baron
by Iscreamer1
Summary: BIRTHDAY FANFIC:). My interpritation of the video games "Snoopy vs. the Red Baron" and "Snoopy Flying Ace" even before the 2006 game came out. Charlie Brown and Heather (the Little Red Haired Girl) have a Titanic-esque love story aboard the Orient Express on the eve of World War I. (crossover with historical figures and characters from The Last Express).
1. Paris to Epernay

The gleaming superstructure of the Eiffel Tower rose mountainously above Gare de l'Est, and above that the buff-colored chimneys stood against the sky like the pillars of a great temple. Crewmen moved across the platform, dwarfed by the awesome scale of the building.

Paris, France, July 24, 1914. It was almost afternoon on the day of departure. A crowd of hundreds blackened the station next to several trains, among them the teak ornate sleeping cars of the famed Orient Express.

A gorgeous burgundy Renault touring car hung from a loading crane. It was lowered toward a nearby baggage wagon.

On the streets, horse drawn vehicles, motorcars, and lorries moved slowly through the dense throng. The atmosphere was one of excitement and general giddiness. As the trains came and leaved, people embraced in tearful farewells, or waved and shouted bon voyage wishes to friends and relatives on the platforms below.

A white Renault, leading a silver-gray Daimler-Benz, pushed through the crowd, leaving a wake in the press of people. Around the handsome cars people were streaming to board the trains, jostling with hustling engineers and firemen, porters and barking C.I.W.L officials.

The Renault stopped and the liveried driver scurried to open the door for a young boy dressed in a stunning overcoat covering a yellow shirt with a black zig zagged stripe outfit, and enormous matching brown hat to go with it. He was thirteen years old and handsome, regal of bearing, with piercing eyes.

It was the boy in the drawing. Charlie Brown. He looked up at the train, taking it in with cool appraisal.

"I don't see what all the fuss is about. It doesn't look any longer than the Oostende-Wien Express."

A personal valet opened the door on the other side of the car for Lucy van Pelt, the twelve-year-old heir to the elder Van Pelt's fortune. Lucy was beautiful, arrogant, and rich beyond meaning.

"You can be blasé about some things, Charlie Brown, but not about the Orient Express. It's over a few cars longer than the Oostende-Wien Express, and far more luxurious."

Lucy turned and gave her hand to Charlie Brown's sister, Sally Brown, who descended from the touring car behind her. Sally was a first grade society empress, from one of the most prominent Philadelphia families. She was the youngest member of the Browns, and ruled her household with an iron will.

"Your brother is much too hard to impress, Sally." She indicated a puddle. "Mind your step."

Sally gazed at the leviathan. "So this is the train they say goes across the continent at 60 mph."

"It is that fast. Almost broke a record this train." Lucy spoke with the pride of a host providing a special experience.

This entire entourage of rich Americans was impeccably turned out, a quintessential example of the Edwardian upper class, complete with servants. Lucy's valet (and unintentional boyfriend), Schroeder, was tall and impassive, dour as an undertaker. Behind him emerged Lucy's younger brothers, Linus and Rerun.

A C.I.W.L trainmaster, by the name of Verges scurried toward them, harried by last minute loading.

"Mademoiselle, you'll have to check your baggage through the main terminal, round that way—"

Lucy nonchalantly handed the man a fiver. The porter's eyes dilated. Five pounds was a monster tip in those days.

"I put my faith in you, good sir." She nodded curtly, indicating Schroeder. "See my man."

"Yes, madam. My pleasure, madam."

Lucy never tired of the effect of money on the unwashed masses.

Schroeder pulled the chef de train back toward the cars. "These trunks here and twelve more in the Daimler. We'll have all this lot up in the private car."

The chef de train looked stricken when he saw the enormous pile of steamer trunks and suitcases loading down the second car, including wooden crates, a rather heavy briefcase and a steel safe. He whistled frantically for some cargo-handlers nearby, who came running.

Lucy breezed on, leaving the minions to scramble. She quickly checked her pocket watch.

"We'd better hurry. This way."

She indicated the way toward the first sleeping car. They moved into the crowd. Linus van Pelt, Charlie Brown's wise friend and Lucy's brother, hustled behind them, laden with bags of his friend's most recent purchases...things too delicate for the baggage handlers.

Lucy led, weaving between vehicles and handcarts, hurrying passengers (mostly second class and third) and well-wishers. Most of the first class passengers were avoiding the smelly press of the station crowd by using a casual entrance.

They passed a line of passengers in their coarse wool and tweeds, queued up inside movable barriers like cattle in a chute. A health officer examined their heads one by one, checking scalp and eyelashes for lice.

Lucy guided them out of the path of a horse-drawn wagon loaded down with two tons of Calais marmalade in wooden cases, for the Orient Express's victualing department.

Charlie Brown looked up as the sleeping cars of the Orient Express loomed over them...a great wooden wall, oak wood and all. Lucy motioned him forward, and he entered the green sleeping car to the doors with a sense of overwhelming dread.

It was the train de luxe...to everyone else. To Charlie Brown, it was a slave train, taking him to Constantinople in chains.

Lucy's hand closed possessively over Charlie Brown's arm. She escorted him up the steps and the teak sleeping coach of Orient Express swallowed them.

Outwardly, Charlie Brown was everything a well brought up boy should be. Inside, he was screaming.

* * *

The view of the Orient Express from the window of a pub, several blocks away, hid under the terminal buildings like the skyline of a city. The train's whistle echoed across Paris.

The smoky inside of the pub was crowded with dockworkers and train's crew. Just inside the window, a poker game was in progress. Two boys and two girls, in working class clothes, played a very serious hand.

Heather Dawson and Franklin di Rossi, both about fifteen, exchanged a glance as the other two players argued in Arabic. Heather was American, a lanky drifter with her red hair a little long for the standards of the times. She was also clean, and her clothes were rumpled from sleeping in them. She was an artist, and had adopted the bohemian style of the art scene in another part of Paris. She was also very self-possessed and sure-footed for fifteen, having lived on her own since five.

The two Persians continued their sullen argument in Arabic.

"أنت غبي رئيس الأسماك. لا أستطيع أن أصدق أنك تراهن على تذاكر لدينا. (You stupid fish head. I can't believe you bet our tickets.)"

"فقد كنت أموالنا. أنا مجرد محاولة للحصول عليه مرة أخرى. أغلقت الآن واتخاذ بطاقة. (You lost our money. I'm just trying to get it back. Now shut up and take a card.)"

Heather spoke up jauntily. "Hit me again, Pierre."

Heather took the card and slipped it into her hand. Her eyes betrayed nothing.

Franklin licked his lips nervously as he refused a card.

The stack in the middle of the table contained bills and coins from four countries. This had been going on for a while. Sitting on top of the money were two tickets for the Orient Express.

The Orient Express's whistle blew again. Final warning.

"The moment of truth, boys. Somebody's life's about to change."

Franklin put his cards down. So did the Arabs. Heather held hers close.

"Let's see...Franklin's got niente. Violette, you've got squat. Pierre, uh-oh...two pair...mmm." Heather turned to her friend. "Sorry, Franklin."

"What sorry? What you got? You lose my money? Ma va fa'n culo testa di cazzo—"

"Sorry, you're not gonna see your mama again for a long time..." She slapped a full house down on the table. Grinning, he continued, "'Cause you're going to Asia Minor! Full house, boys!"

"Dio mio, grazie!" Franklin was stunned and overjoyed.

The table exploded into shouting in several languages. Heather raked in the money and the tickets.

Pierre balled up one huge farmer's fist. It looked like he was going to clobber Heather, but he swung around and punched Violette, who flopped backward onto the floor and sat there, looking depressed. Pierre forgot about Heather and Franklin, who were dancing around, and went into a rapid harangue of his stupid cousin.

Heather kissed the tickets, then jumped on Franklin's back and rode him around the pub. It was like they had won the lottery.

"I'm going away!" Heather shouted.

Franklin shouted to the pub keeper. "Capito? I go to Constantinople!"

"No, mate. Orient Express go to Asia. In five minutes." He pointed to the clock.

"Shit! Come on, Franklin!" Heather grabbed their stuff. "Come on!" She shouted to everyone in the room, grinning. "It's been grand."

They ran for the door.

* * *

"Mesdames et messieurs, votre attention s'il vous plaît. L'Orient-Express est maintenant de partir pour Strasbourg, Munich, Vienne, Budapest, Belgrade, Sofia et Constantinople. Tous les passegers doit être à bord. (Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. The Orient Express is now leaving for Strasbourg, Munich, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Sofia and Constantinople. All passengers should be on board.)"

"We're riding in high style now! We're practically goddamned royalty, raggazzo mio!"

"You see? Is my destiny! Like I told you. I go to l'Constantinople! To be a millionaire!"

Heather and Franklin, carrying everything they owned in the world in the lit bags on their shoulders, sprinted toward the station. They tore through milling crowds next to the platform. Shouts went up behind them as they jostled slow-moving gentlemen. They dodged piles of luggage, and wove through groups of people. They burst out onto the terminus, and Heather came to a dead stop, staring at the vast wall of the train's consist, towering seven wide and over six coaches long. The Orient Express was almost monstrous.

Franklin ran back and grabbed Heather, and they sprinted toward the platform. They reached the bottom of the ramp just as conductor Rene Mertens detached it at the top. It started to swing down from the gangway doors.

"Wait! We're passengers!" Flushed and panting, Heather waved the tickets.

"Have you been through the inspection queue?"

Heather lied cheerfully. "Of course! Anyway, we don't have lice, we're Americans." She glanced at Franklin. "Both of us."

Mertens responded testily. "Right, come aboard."

Heather and Franklin whooped with victory as they danced for joy in the corridor, grinning from ear to ear.

"We are the luckiest kids in the world!"

The last doors were closed. A cheer went up on the station as the 4-4-0 Belgian Dunalastair locomotive pulled the Orient Express away from the line.

Heather and Franklin looked back on through the window at the end of the sleeping wagon. They started to yell and wave to the crowd.

"You know somebody?"

"Of course not. That's not the point." Heather shouted to the crowd. "Good-bye! Good-bye! I'll miss you!"

Grinning, Franklin joined in, adding his voice to the swell of voices, feeling the exhilaration of the moment.

"Good-bye! I will never forget you!"

The crowd of cheering well-wishers waved heartily as a teak wall of coaches moved past them. Impossibly tiny figures waved back from the platforms to other trains. The Orient Express gathered speed.

The locomotive of the Express dwarfed the smaller engines. The rails laid before the mighty plow of the engine as it moved down out of the station en route to Constantinople via Belgrade—a 62 hour, 2000 mile trip.

Heather and Franklin walked down a narrow corridor with doors containing a flower on them. There was total confusion as people argued over luggage in several languages, or wandered in confusion in the labyrinth.

They found their compartment (number 4 to be exact). It was a modest cubicle, painted brown, with almost 2 beds closed in a single couch. There was an alarm overhead. The other two passengers were already there: Mahmud Makhta and a member of his harem Fatima.

Heather threw his kit on one open bunk, while Franklin took the other.

Mahmud spoke to Fatima in Arabic.

"أين هو بيير؟ (Where is Pierre?)"

* * *

In stark contrast to the passenger cars, the so-called private coach of Prince Kronos, dubbed the "Saturn" was in the Art Nouveau style, and comprised a bedroom, a bath, water closet, wardrobe room, and a large sitting room. In addition, it was decked with a piano and pieces of artistic work.

Kahina poured champagne into a tulip glass of orange juice and handed the Bucks Fizz to Charlie. She was looking through his new paintings. There was a Franz Marc painting of the futurist movement, Gustav Klimt's "Malevolent Powers", and a few abstract works. They were all unknown paintings...lost works.

Lucy was sitting beside the end walls which were decorated in the style of the Hotel Tassel, talking to Charlie in the sitting room. "Those finger paintings were certainly a waste of money."

Charlie looked at a "snake-lady" portrait. "You're wrong. The difference between Lucy's taste in art and mine is that I have some. They're fascinating. Like being inside a dream or something...there's truth but no logic. What's his name again?" He read off the canvas. "Franz von Stuck."

Lucy came into the sitting room. "He'll never amount to a thing. Trust me. At least they were cheap."

Kahina wheeled Lucy's private safe into the room on a hand truck.

"Put that in the wardrobe," Lucy instructed her.

In the bedroom, Charlie entered with the large Marc painting. He set it on the dresser, near the Louis Majorelle-designed bed. Linus was already in there, hanging up some of Charlie's clothes.

"It smells so brand new. Like they built it all just for us. I mean...just to think that tonight, when I crawl between the sheets, I'll be the first—"

Lucy appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. Looking at Charlie, she commented, "And when I crawl between the sheets tonight, I'll still be the first."

Linus blushed at the innuendo. "Excuse me, sir."

He edged around Lucy and made a quick exit. Lucy came up behind Charlie and put her hands on his shoulders, an act of possession, not intimacy. "The first and only. Forever."

Charlie's expression showed how bleak a prospect this was for him now.

* * *

At Gare d'Épernay, the Orient Express stood silhouetted against a purple post-sunset sky. It was lit up like a street, and its windows reflected in the calm French countryside. Another train lay alongside in the opposite direction. The lights of the town of Épernay completed the postcard image.

Entering the green sleeping car from the platform were a number of prominent passengers. A tomboyish girl in an enormous feathered hat with sandals came up the steps, carrying a suitcase in each hand, a young man with brown hair and blue eyes running to catch up with her to take the bags.

"Well, I wasn't about to wait all day for you, Robert. Take 'em the rest of the way if you think you can manage."

Two young men had come aboard named Robert Cath and Tyler Whitney. The girl's name was Patricia Reichardt, but everyone called her Patty. History would call her Peppermint Patty. Her friend Marcie had struck gold to support the strikes going on in Russia, and she was what Lucy called "new money."

At fourteen, Peppermint Patty was a slightly dim-witted, but tough talking straight shooter who dressed in the finery of her genteel peers (as well as sandals) but would never be one of them.

By the next few minutes they had made their next stop at Chalons-sur-Marne and they were chugging east towards Bar-le-Duc, with nothing out ahead of them but the rest of Europe.


	2. Epernay to Strasbourg

The train glowed with the warm creamy light of dusk. Heather and Franklin stood right at the window of their compartment gripping the wooden framework. Heather leaned over, looking down five feet to where the rails were.

At the British military base RAF Halton, Captain Roy Brown turned from the field to Commander David Henderson. "Take our men for a little exorcise, Mister Henderson. If we're to face war, let's stretch their legs."

Henderson moved a telegraph to the training room.

In the training room onboard a ship the telegraph clanged and moved to full. The Chief shouted the command. "All ahead full!"

On the locomotive, the engineer, watched carefully as the fireman scrambled to adjust to assist the adjusting valves. The engine's straight traction rods surging up and down with the turning of the massive crankshafts. The engine thundered like the footfalls of marching giants.

In the steel works, the stokers chanted a song as they hurled coal into the roaring furnaces. The "black gang" was covered with sweat and coal dust, their muscles working like part of the machinery as they toiled in the hellish glow.

Underneath, the wheels chopped through the rails, hurling the loco forward and churning up a vortex of wind that lingered for miles behind the juggernaut train. Smoke poured from the smokestack as the train's speed built. Above the window stood Heather, the wind streaming through her red hair.

Captain Brown stepped out of the enclosed hangar onto the field. He stood with his hands on the rail, looking every bit the storybook picture of a Captain...a great patriarch of the sky. Commander Henderson stepped up to him.

"Twenty-one men, sir!"

"One of them's got a bone in their teeth now, eh, Mr. Henderson?"

Brown accepted a cup of tea from Hugh Trenchard. He contentedly watched the white V of water hurled outward from the bows of a troopship in the nearest river like an expression of his own personal power. They were invulnerable, towering over the sea.

At the window of compartment 4 Heather and Franklin leaned far over, looking down.

In the glassy river, two dolphins appeared, under the water, running fast just in front of the steel blade of the bridge. They did it for the sheer joy and exultation of motion. Heather watched the dolphins and grinned. They breached; jumping clear of the water and then dove back, crisscrossing in front of the bridge, and dancing ahead of the juggernaut.

Franklin looked forward across a lake, staring into the sun sparkles. "I can see the Hagia Sophia already." He grinned at Heather. "Very small...of course."

Heather grinned, caught up in the sheer joy of the moment. Lifting her head in the wind, she balanced precariously out the window, shouting exuberantly. "I'm the queen of the world!" Framed against the water, he and Franklin shouted joyfully, looking east toward Constantinople.

The train rolled endlessly forward. Its funnel marched past like the pillars of heaven, one by one. The people strolled in the coaches and stood at the windows.

And the Orient Express moved on, teak and purple in its majesty.

* * *

"She is the most luxurious train ever made by the hand of man in all history..." August Schmidt, Managing Director of Schmidt Steel Works, was extolling the virtues of the train. "...and our financier, Mr. Whitney here, designed her from the keel plates up." He indicated the handsome American gentleman to his right, Robert Cath and Tyler Whitney, of Harvard University.

The group was assembled for second service dinner. August was seated with Lucy, Charlie, Sally, Peppermint Patty, and Cath in the restaurant car, a beautiful spot enclosed by high windows.

Tyler disliked the attention. "Well, I may have helped knocked this car together, but the idea was Mr. Georges Nagelmackers. He envisioned a train so grand in scale, and so luxurious in its appointments, that its supremacy would never be challenged. And here she is..." He slapped the table. "...willed into solid reality."

Peppermint Patty spoke up. "Why are trains sometimes bein' called 'she'? Is it because men think half the women around have big tenders and should be weighed in tonnage?" They all laughed. "Just another example of the men settin' the rules their way."

The waiter Pascale arrived to take orders. "Oui, Madame, avez-vous fait votre choix? (Yes, Madam, have you made your choice?)" Charlie lit a cigarette.

"You know I don't like that, Big Brother," Sally told him. He replied, "What's the harm in doing something if you don't try it?"

"He knows." Lucy took the cigarette from him and stubbed it out, causing Charlie to cough. To the waiter, she said, "We'll both have the beef fillet. Rare, with a little mint sauce." To Charlie, after the waiter moved on, he asked, "You like beef fillet, don't you, sweetpea?" "Oui." said Charlie in a language he thought Pascale would only understand. The waiter replied "Le filet de boeuf. (The beef fillet.) Very good, monsieur."

Peppermint Patty was watching the dynamic between Charlie, Lucy, and Sally. "So, you gonna cut his meat for him too, there, Lucy?" Turning to August, she asked, "Hey, who came up with the name Orient Express? You, August?"

"Nein, actually. The owner wanted to convey sheer size. And size means stability, luxury...and safety—"

Charlie couldn't resist. "Do you know of Dr. Freud? His ideas about the male preoccupation with size might be of particular interest to you, Herr. Schmidt."

Cath choked on his breadstick, suppressing laughter.

Sally was shocked and embarrassed. "Good Grief, big brother, what's gotten into—"

"Excuse me." Charlie stalked away, only to let the regal concert violinist Anna Wolff take his seat. She looked mortified. "Whatever just happened, I do apologize for Mr. Brown."

"He's a pistol, Lucy. You sure you can handle him?" Peppermint Patty was delighted with the whole thing.

Tense but feigning unconcern, Lucy replied, "Well, I may have to start minding what he reads from now on."

August was still confused. "Freud? Who is he? Is he that doctor I've heard so much about?"

* * *

Heather sat on a bench in the station of Gare de Bar-le-Duc. The Express's wake spread out behind her to the horizon. She had her knees pulled up, supporting a leather bound sketching pad, his only valuable possession. With conte crayon he drew rapidly, using sure strokes. A boy and girl were standing on the lower platform. She was leaned back against his beer barrel of a stomach, watching the birds.

The sketch captured them perfectly, with a great sense of the humanity of the moment. Heather was good. Really good. Franklin looked over Heather's shoulder. He nodded appreciatively.

Shermy Ryan, a scowling young Irish emigrant, watched as a porter came by; walking a grey Siberian husky named Max, supposedly belonging to Mlle. Wolff.

"That's typical. A dog comes down here to take a shite."

Heather looked up from her sketch. "That's so we know where we rank in the scheme of things."

"Like we could forget."

Heather glanced across the the foward platform of the red sleeping car stood Charlie, in a long lace shirt and white trousers.

Heather was unable to take her eyes off of him. They were across from each other, about sixty feet apart, with the platform like a valley between them. He on her promontory, she on his much lower one. He stared down at the ground. She was riveted by him. He looked like a figure in a romantic novel, sad and isolated.

Franklin tapped Shermy and they both looked at Heather gazing at Charlie. Franklin and Shermy grinned at each other.

Charlie turned suddenly and looked right at Heather. She was caught staring, but he didn't look away. He did, but then looked back. Their eyes met across the space of the window, across the gulf between worlds.

Heather saw a girl, Lucy, come up behind him and take his arm. She jerked his arm away. They argued inaudibly. He stormed away, and she went after him, disappearing along the platform. Heather stared after him.

"Forget it, boyo. You'd as like have angels fly out o' your arse as get next to the likes o' him." Shermy grinned.

Charlie sat at the table in the restaurant car, flanked by people in heated conversation. Lucy and Sally were laughing together, while on the other side Madame. Boutarel was holding forth animatedly. She didn't hear what they were saying. Charlie was staring at his plate, barely listening to the inconsequential babble around him.

He saw his whole life as if he'd already lived it...an endless parade of parties and cotillions, yachts and polo matches...always the same narrow people, the same mindless chatter. He felt like he was standing at a great precipice, with no one to pull him back, no one who cared...or even noticed.

Beneath the table Charlie's hand held a tiny fork from his steak. He poked the fork into the skin of his arm, harder and harder until it drew blood.

Charlie walked along the corridor. Conductor Condert who was coming the other way greeted him, and he nodded with a slight smile. He was perfectly composed.

He entered the private car's bedroom. Charlie stood in the middle, staring at his reflection in the large vanity mirror. He just stood there.

Then, with a primal, anguished cry, he clawed at his throat, ripping off his watch, which exploded across the room. In a frenzy he tore at himself, his clothes, his hair...then attacked the room. He flung everything off the dresser and it flew clattering against the wall. He hurled a hand mirror against the vanity, cracking it.

Charlie ran daintily along the corridors. He was disheveled, his hair flying. He was crying, his cheeks streaked with tears. But he was also angry. Furious! Shaking with emotions he didn't understand...hatred, self-hatred, desperation. Two members of the harem watched him pass, shocked at the emotional display in public.

Heather was kicked back on the door of her compartment, gazing at the stars blazing gloriously overhead. She was thinking artist thoughts and smoking a cigarette.

Hearing something, she turned as Charlie paced up and down. They were the only two on the corridor, except for the Serbian passengers Vesna Savin, Ivo Biskupovic and Salko Popivoda from the red sleeping car, twenty feet apart. He didn't see Heather in the shadows, and ran right past her.

Charlie ran back to the deserted door. His breath hitched in an occasional sob, which he suppressed. Charlie slammed against the base of the rear platform of the green car and clung there, panting. He stared out at the black ground.

Then he opened the door and started to climb out the steps. He had to hitch his long suit way up, and it was clumsy. Moving methodically, he turned his body and got his heels on the grey steps, his back to the open door, facing out toward blackness. Six feet below him, the carriage bogies were churning the rails.

Charlie stood like a figurehead in reverse. Above him were the gold letters of the name Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits et des Grands Express Européens.

He leaned out, his arms straightening...looking down hypnotized, into the vortex below his. His suit and hair were lifted by the wind of the train's movement. The only sound, above the rush of wind below, was the flutter and snap of the big Union Jack right above him.

"Don't do it."

He whipped his head around at the sound of Heather's voice. It took a second for his eyes to focus.

"Stay back! Don't come any closer!"

Heather saw the tear tracks on his cheeks in the faint glow from the lights. "Take my hand. I'll pull you back in."

"No! Stay where you are. I mean it. I'll let go."

"No, you won't."

"What do you mean, no I won't? Don't presume to tell me what I will and will not do. You don't know me."

"You would have done it already. Now come on, take my hand."

Charlie was confused now. He couldn't see her very well through the tears, so he wiped them with one hand, almost losing his balance. "You're distracting me. Go away."

"I can't. I'm involved now. If you let go I have to jump in after you."

"Don't be absurd. You could be killed."

She took off her jacket. "I'm a good lander." She started unlacing his left shoe.

"The fall alone could kill you."

"It would hurt. I'm not saying it wouldn't. To be honest, I'm a lot more concerned about any nearby ponds or lakes being so cold."

He looked for any ponds or lakes or rivers. The reality factor of what he was doing was sinking in.

"How cold?"

Heather took off her left shoe. "Freezing. Maybe a couple degrees over." She started unlacing her right shoe. "Ever been to Ohio?"

Charlie was perplexed. "No."

"Well, they have some of the coldest winters around, and I grew up there, near Chippewa Falls. Once, when I was a kid me and my father were ice-fishing out on Lake Erie...ice-fishing's where you chop a hole in the—"

"I know what ice fishing is!"

"Sorry. Just...you look like kind of an indoor boy. Anyway, I went through some thin ice, and I'm tellin' you, water that cold...like that river right down there...it hits you like a thousand knives stabbing all over your body. You can't breath, you can't think...least not about anything but the pain." He took off his other shoe. "Which is why I'm not looking forward to jumping in after you. But like I said, I don't see a choice." He smiled. "I guess I'm kind of hoping you'll come back over the edge and get me off the hook here."

"You're crazy."

"That's what everybody says. But with all due respect, sir, I'm not the one hanging off the back of a train here." She slid one step closer, like moving up on a spooked horse. "Come on. You don't want to do this. Give me your hand."

Charlie stared at this mad girl for a long time. He looked at her eyes and they somehow suddenly seemed to fill his universe. "All right."

He unfastened one hand from the rail and reached it around toward her. He reached out to take it, firmly.

"I'm Heather Dawson."

Charlie's voice quavered. "I'm Charlie Brown."

He smiled. "I'm gonna have to get you to write that one down."

Charlie started to turn. Now that he had decided to live, the height was terrifying. He was overcome by vertigo as he shifted his footing, turning to face the train. As he started to climb, his suit got in the way, and one foot slipped off the edge of the platform.

He plunged, letting out a piercing shriek. Heather, gripping his hand, was jerked toward the hand-rail. Charlie barely grabbed a lower rail with his free hand.

Vesna, Ivo and Salko, up on the red sleeping car, heard the scream and headed for the second one.

"Help! Please help me!" Charlie was screaming in terror.

"I've got you. I won't let go."

Heather held his hand with all her strength, bracing herself on the railing with his other hand. Charlie tried to get some kind of a foothold on the smooth hull. Heather tried to lift his bodily over the railing. He couldn't get any footing in his suit and evening shoes, and he slipped back. Charlie screamed again.

Heather, awkwardly clutching Charlie by whatever he could get a grip on as she flailed, got him over the railing. They fell together onto the floor in a tangled heap, spinning in such a way that Heather wound up slightly on top of him.

Vesna raced down the corridor like it was a fire drill and opened the door.

"Ево, шта је све ово? (Here, what's all this?)"

Vesna ran up and pulled Heather off of Charlie, revealing his disheveled and sobbing on the corridor. His suit was torn, and the hem was pushed up above his knees, showing one ripped stocking. She looked at Heather, the little red haired girl with her jacket off, and the male clearly in distress, and started drawing conclusions. Ivo and Salko joined her.

Vesna shouted at Heather in a heated Serbo-Croatian. "Ево ти, одмакните! Не мрдај ни милиметар! (Here you, stand back! Don't move an inch!)" To her comrades, she said, "Донеси је кувар-де-воз. (Fetch the chef-de-train.)"

* * *

A few minutes later, when the train arrived in Gare de Strasbourg, Heather was being detained by the burly Trainmaster Verges, the closest thing to a cop on board. He was handcuffing Heather. Lucy was right in front of Heather, and furious. She had obviously just rushed out there with Schroeder and another man, and none of them had coats over their black tie evening dress. The other man was Milos Jovanovic, a black bearded Serbian blowhard who still had his brandy snifter. He offered it to Charlie, who was hunched over crying on a bench nearby, but he waved it away. Lucy was more concerned with Heather. She grabbed her by the lapels.

"What made you think you could put your hands on my fiancée? Look at me, you whore! What did you think you were doing?"

Charlie intervened. "Lucy, stop! It was an accident."

"An accident?"

"It was...stupid really. I was leaning over and I slipped." Charlie looked at Heather, getting eye contact. "I was leaning way over, to see the...ah...rails. And I slipped and I would have gone overboard...and Ms. Dawson here saved me and she almost went over himself."

"You wanted to see the rails?"

Milos shook his head. "Boys and machinery do not mix."

Trainmaster Verges spoke to Heather. "Was that the way of it?"

Charlie was begging him with her eyes not to say what really happened.

"Uh-huh. That was pretty much it."

She looked at Charlie a moment longer. Now they had a secret together.

"Well! The girl's a hero then. Good for you miss, well done!" He turned to Lucy. "So it's all's well and back to our brandy, eh?"

Heather was uncuffed. Lucy got Charlie to his feet and moving.

Lucy rubbed her arms. "Let's get you in. You're freezing."

Lucy was leaving without a second thought for Heather.

Milos spoke to her in a low voice. "Ah...perhaps a little something for the boy?"

"Oh, right. Schroeder. A twenty should do it."

Charlie was shocked. "Is that the going rate for saving the boy you love?"

"Charlie is displeased. Mmm...what to do?" Lucy turned back to Heather. She appraised her condescendingly...a steerage ruffian, unwashed and ill-mannered. "I know." He spoke to Heather. "Perhaps you could join us for dinner tomorrow, to regale our group with your heroic tale?"

Heather looked straight at Charlie. "Sure. Count me in."

"Good. Settled then." Lucy turned to go, putting a protective arm around Charlie. She leaned close to Milos as they walked away. "This should be amusing."

Heather spoke to Schroeder as he passed her. "Can I bum a cigarette?"

Schroeder smoothly drew a silver cigarette case from his jacket and snapped it open. Heather took a cigarette, then another, popping it behind her ear for later. Schroeder lit Heather's cigarette.

"You'll want to tie those." Heather looked at her shoes. "Interesting that the young man slipped so mighty all of a sudden and you still had time to take off your jacket and shoes. Mmm?"

Schroeder's expression was bland, but his eyes were cold. He turned away to join his group.

* * *

As he undressed for bed, Charlie saw Lucy standing in his doorway, reflected in the cracked mirror of his vanity. She came toward him.

Lucy spoke to him in an unexpectedly tender voice. "I know you've been melancholy, and I don't pretend to know why."

From behind his back she handed him a large briefcase. He took it numbly.

"I intended to save this till the engagement gala next week. But I thought…tonight, perhaps a reminder of my feelings for you..."

Charlie slowly opened the box. Inside was a golden Chinese egg...the legendary Firebird in all its glory. It was huge...a malevolent egg shaped globe of the world glittering with aqua, blue, red, purple and green jewels representing each country, a miniature portrait of a black haired woman hidden inside the top jewel and an infinity of scalpel-like inner reflections.

"Good Grief...Lucy. Is it a—"

"Egg? Yes, it is. Fifty-six carats, to be exact."

She took the egg and placed it in his hands. She turned him to the mirror, standing behind him.

"It was once carried by Abdul Hamid II, the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. And in Russia, they call it the story of Prince Ivan and, the—"

"The Firebird. Lucy, it's...it's overwhelming."

He gazed at the image of the two of them in the mirror.

"It's for royalty. And we are royalty."

Her fingers caressed his neck and throat. She seemed himself to be disarmed by Charlie's elegance and beauty. Upon seeing that the woman in the hidden locket had a slit throat, his emotion was, for the first time, unguarded.

"There's nothing I couldn't give you. There's nothing I'd deny you, if you would not deny me. Open your heart to me, Charlie."

Of course, her gift was only to reflect light back onto himself, to illuminate the greatness that was Lucy van Pelt. It was a cold stone...a heart of ice with macabre results.


	3. Arrival in Munich

Charlie walked into the sunlight on the enclosed München Ostbahnhof. He was stunningly dressed and walking with purpose. He felt as if he hadn't felt the sun in years.

It was Saturday, July 25, 1914. Charlie unlatched the gate to go into town. The men on the platform stopped what they were doing and stared at him.

The nearby pub was the social center of destitute life. It was stark by comparison to the opulence of the wealthy, but was a loud, boisterous place. There were sisters with babies, kids running between the benches yelling in several languages and being scolded in several more. There were old women yelling, men playing chess, girls doing needlepoint and reading dime novels. There was even an upright piano and Shermy Ryan was noodling around on it.

Three boys, shrieking and shouting, were scrambling around chasing a rat under the benches, trying to whomp it with a shoe and causing general havoc. Heather was playing with three-year-old Lila Cartmell, drawing funny faces together in his sketchbook.

Franklin was struggling to get a conversation going with an attractive German girl, Janice, sitting with her family at a table across the room.

"No Italian? Some little English?"

"No, no. Norwegian. Only."

Janice's eye was caught by something. Franklin looked, did a double take...and Heather, curious, followed their gaze to see Charlie coming toward them. The activity in the room stopped...a hush fell. Charlie felt suddenly self-conscious as the pub members stared openly at this prince, some with resentment, others with awe. He spotted Heather and gave a little smile, walking straight to her. She rose to meet him, smiling.

"Hello, Heather."

Franklin and Shermy were floored. It was like the slipper fitting Cinderella.

"Hello again."

"Could I speak to you in private?"

"Uh, yes. Of course. After you."

She motioned him ahead and followed. Heather glanced over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised, as he walked with her, leaving a stunned silence.

Heather and Charlie walked side by side. They passed people reading and talking in steamer chairs, some of whom glanced curiously at the mismatched couple.

"So I've been on my own since I was five, since my folks died in a fire. I have no brothers and sisters, or close kin in that part of the country, no reason to stay, so I lit out an' never been back since."

"So you don't have a home of any kind?"

"No, I'm like a tumbleweed, blowin' in the wind. Listen, Charlie, we've walked about a mile around this platform and we've chewed over how I grew up and how great the weather's been, but I reckon that's not why you came to talk to me."

There was an awkward pause.

"Miss. Dawson, I—"

"Heather."

"Heather...I feel like such an idiot. It took me all morning to get up the nerve to face you."

He looked her in the eye.

Charlie took a deep breath. "I...I want to thank you for what you did. Not just for...for pulling me back. But for your discretion."

"You're welcome. Charlie."

"Look, I know what you must be thinking! Poor little rich boy. What does he know about misery?"

"That's not what I was thinking. What I was thinking was...what could have happened to hurt this boy so much he thought he had no way out?"

"I don't...you see, it wasn't just one thing. It was everything. It was my whole world and all the people in it. And the inertia of my life, plunging ahead and me powerless to stop it."

He held up his engagement ring.

"God, look at that thing! You would have gone straight to the bottom."

"Five hundred invitations have gone out. All of Asia society will be there. And all the while I feel like I'm standing in the middle of a crowded room, screaming at the top of my lungs, and no one even looks up." He continued in a rush. "Last night I felt so trapped. I just had to get away...just run and run and run...and then I was at the rear platform and there was no more train...even the Orient Express wasn't big enough. And before I'd really thought about it, I was over the rail. I was so furious. I'll teach them not to listen. They'll be sorry."

"They'll be sorry. 'Course, you'll be dead."

Charlie was embarrassed. "Oh God, I am such an utter fool."

"So you're stuck on a train you can't get off 'cause you're marryin' this fellow. So don't marry her."

"If only it were that simple."

"It is that simple."

"No, Heather. No, no, no, no. I'm sorry, I can't expect you to understand how things work in my life."

"Do you love her?"

Charlie looked at her in shock. "Pardon me?"

"Do you love her?"

He was flustered by her directness. "You're being very rude. You shouldn't be asking me this."

"Well, it's simple. Do you love her or not?"

"This is not a suitable conversation."

"Why can't you just answer the question?"

"This is absurd. You don't know me and I don't know you and we are not having this conversation at all. You are rude and uncouth and presumptuous and I'm leaving now. Heather...Miss. Dawson...it's been a pleasure. I sought you out to thank you and now I have thanked you—"

"And you've insulted me—"

"Well, you deserved it."

"Right. Right." She grinned. "I thought you were leaving."

Charlie started to laugh in spite of himself. "I am. You are so annoying. Wait! I don't have to leave. This is where the train stops. You leave!"

"Well, well, well. Now who's being rude?" Heather grinned at him.

Charlie's mouth dropped open. "What's that stupid thing you're carrying around?" The question was rhetorical because he had already grabbed the sketchbook. He opened it. "What are you, an artist or something?"

Each of Heather's sketches was an expressive little bit of humanity: an old woman's hands, a sleeping man, a father and daughter at the rail. The faces were luminous and alive. His book was a celebration of the human condition.

"Well, these are rather good." She looked at some more. "They're very good, actually."

"They didn't think too much of 'em in old Paris."

"Paris? I was just there yesterday! You do get around. For a...a person of...well...limited means."

"Go on, go on. A poor girl. You can say it."

Some loose sketches fell out and were taken by the wind. Heather scrambled after them...catching two, but the rest were gone, ran over by several arriving trains.

"Oh, no! Oh, I'm so sorry. Truly!"

"Don't worry about it. Plenty more where they came from."

He snapped his wrist, shaking his drawing hand in a flourish.

"I just seem to spew 'em out. Besides, they're not worth a damn anyway."

For emphasis she threw away the two she caught. They sailed off into the luggage car of a nearby train.

Charlie laughed. "You're deranged!"

He went back to the book, turning a page.

"Well, well...well."

He had come upon a series of nudes. The languid beauty she had created transfixed Charlie. Her nudes were soulful, real, with expressive hands and eyes. They felt more like portraits than studies of the human form...almost uncomfortably intimate. Charlie blushed, raising the book as some strollers went by.

Trying to be very adult, he asked, "And these were drawn from life?"

"Yes. That's one of the good things about Paris. Lots of girls and sometimes boys willing to take their clothes off."

He studied one drawing in particular, the girl posed half in sunlight, half in shadow. Her hands lay at her chin, one furled and one open like a flower, languid and graceful. The drawing was like an Alfred Steiglitz print of Georgia O'Keefe.

"You liked this man. Some of his soul is in this one. You used him several times."

"He had beautiful hands, see?"

Charlie smiled. "I think you must have had a love affair with him..."

Heather laughed. "No, no! Just with his hands. He was a one-legged gigolo." She showed him a full body pose. "See? Good sense of humor though, huh?" She showed him a sketch of a sad, dumpy old woman. "And this lady here...we used to see her every night in this bar, wearing every piece of jewelry she owned, waiting for her lost love. We called her Madame Bovary. Her clothes were all moth eaten."

"You have a gift, Heather. You do." He looked up from the drawings. "You see people."

"I see you."

There it was. That piercing gaze again.

"And...?" He thought he meant as an artist's subject...now he was playful but she was serious again.

"You wouldn't have jumped."

* * *

In the dining car, Sally was having tea with Rebecca Norton and her travelling companion Sophie de Bretheuil, an English blue blood with patrician features and a Frenchwoman with a dot on the right hand corner of her face. "What were you writing one morning?" asked Sophie at one point. "Just my diary." replied Rebecca. "But the purpose of university is to find a suitable wife. Big Brother has already done that." said Sally as she resumed her conversation when she saw someone coming across the room and lowered her voice.

"Oh, no. That vulgar Patty girl is coming this way." said Rebecca. Sally hustled to get up from her seat. "Get up, quickly, before she sits with us."

Peppermint Patty walked up, greeting them cheerfully as they were rising. "Hello girls, I was hoping I'd catch you at tea."

"We're awfully sorry you missed it. Sophie and Rebecca and I are just off to take the air on the outside."

"That sounds great. Let's go. I need to catch up on the gossip."

Sally gritted her teeth as the four of them headed for the doors to go out. As they crossed the smoking car, they passed August Schmidt, Robert Cath and Tyler Whitney at another table.

"So the merchandise is loaded then?"

"Yes and we'll making excellent time."

Schmidt looked at Cath and Whitney impatiently. "Herr Whitney, the press knows the luxury of this train, let them marvel at her speed too. We must give them something new to print. And the high interests of my Fatherland must make headlines!"

"I prefer not to push the engine until it's been properly run in."

"Of course I leave it to my employers to decide what's best, but what a glorious end to this crossing if we get into Constantinople Tuesday night and surprise them all." Schmidt slapped his hand on the table. "Retire with a bang, eh, Tyler?"

After a moment, Cath nodded, stiffly. "Guten tag. (Good day)."

* * *

Charlie and Heather strolled along, past people lounging on chairs in the slanting mid-day light. Porters scurried to serve tea or hot cocoa.

Charlie chattered on, girlish and excited. "You know, my dream has always been to just chuck it all and become an artist...living in a garret, poor but free!"

Heather laughed. "You wouldn't last two days. There's no hot water, and hardly ever any caviar."

In a flash, Charlie was angry. "Listen buster...I hate caviar! And I'm tired of people dismissing my dreams with a chuckle and a pat on the head just because I'm still a kid."

"I'm sorry. Really...I am."

"Well, all right. There's something in me Heather. I feel it. I don't know what it is, whether I should be an artist, or, I don't know...a dancer. Like Isadora Duncan...a wild pagan spirit..."

He leapt forward, landed deftly and whirled like a dervish. Then he saw something ahead and his face lit up.

"...or a moving picture actress!"

He took her hand and ran, pulling her along the platform toward Georges Méliès and Jeanne d'Alcy. Georges was cranking the big wooden movie camera as she posed stiffly at the rail.

"You're sad. Sad, sad, sad. You've left your lover on the shore. You may never see him again. Try to be sadder, darling."

Suddenly Charlie shot into the shot and struck a theatrical pose at the train car next to Jeanne. Jeanne burst out laughing. Charlie pulled Heather into the picture and made her pose.

Georges grinned and started yelling and gesturing.

Charlie posed tragically at the rail, the back of his hand to his forehead.

Heather lay on a deck chair, pretending to be a Pasha, the boy and women pantomiming fanning him like slave girls.

Heather, on her knees, pleaded with her hands clasped while Charlie, standing, turned his head in bored disdain.

Charlie cranked the camera, while Georges and Heather had a western shoot-out. Heather won and leered into the lens, twirling an air mustache like Snidely Whiplash.

Painted with orange light, Heather and Charlie leaned on the end-walls, shoulder-to-shoulder. The station's lights came on.

It was a magical moment...perfect.

"So then what, Mrs. Wandering Heather?"

"Well, then logging got to be too much like work, so I went down to Los Angeles to the pier in Santa Monica. That's a swell place; they even have a roller coaster. I sketched portraits there for ten cents a piece."

"A whole ten cents?"

Heather didn't get it. "Yeah, it was great money...I could make a dollar a day, sometimes. But only in summer. When it got cold, I decided to go to Calais, then Paris and see what the real artists were doing."

Charlie looked at the dusk sky. "Why can't I be like you, Heather? Just head out for the horizon whenever I feel like it." He turned to her. "Say we'll go there, sometime...to that pier...even if we only ever just talk about it."

"All right, we're going. We'll drink cheap beer and go on the roller coaster until we throw up and we'll ride horses on the beach...right in the surf...but you have to ride like a cowboy, none of that sidesaddle stuff."

"You mean one leg on each side? Scandalous! Can you show me?"

"Sure. If you like."

Charlie smiled at her. "I think I would." She looked at the horizon. "And teach me to spit, too. Like a man. Why should only men be able to spit? It's unfair."

"They didn't teach you that in finishing school? Here, it's easy. Watch closely."

She spat. It arced out over the tracks.

"Your turn."

Charlie screwed up his mouth and spat, a pathetic little bit of foamy spittle, which mostly ran down his chin before falling off into the tracksr.

"No, that was pitiful. Here, like this...you hawk it down...HHHNNNK!...then roll it on your tongue, up to the front, like this, then a big breath and PLOOW! You see the range on that thing?"

He went through the steps. Hawked it down, etc. She coached her through it while doing the steps himself. She let fly. So did he. Two comets of gob flew out over the water.

"That was great!"

Charlie turned to her, his face alight. Suddenly, he blanched. She saw hisexpression and turned.

Sally, Sophie, Rebecca and Peppermint Patty had been watching them hawking lugees. Charlie became instantly composed.

"Sally, may I introduce Heather Dawson."

"Charmed, I'm sure."

Heather had a little spit running down her chin. He didn't know it. Peppermint Patty was grinning. As Charlie proceeded with the introductions, Peppermint Patty pointed it out to Heather.

The others were gracious and curious about the girl who'd saved Charlie's life. But his little sister looked at her like an insect. A dangerous insect, which must be squashed quickly.

"Sophie de Bretheuil." said Sophie shaking Heather's left hand. "And this timid person is Mademoiselle Norton."

"You are French?" asked Heather.

"I'm Bohemian, and Mademoiselle Norton is English."

"Peppermint Patty's the name."

"Hello."

"Well, Heather, it sounds like you're a good woman to have around in a sticky spot—"

They all jumped as the trainmaster sounded the meal call right behind them in French and later in English.

"Premier service ... Premier service .. Le déjeuner est servi. (First service... First service.. Lunch is served...)"

"Why do they insist on announcing lunch like a damn cavalry charge?"

"Shall we go dress, Sally?" Charlie looked at Heather over his shoulder. "See you at lunch, Heather."

As they walked away, Sally scolded, "Big Brother, look at you...out in the sun with no hat. Honestly!"

"Can't you let me be for once, I _am _your _big _brother after all."

Sophie and Rebecca left with Sally and Charlie, leaving Heather and Peppermint Patty alone on the platform.

"Son, do you have the slightest comprehension of what you're doing?"

"Not really."

"Well, you're about to go into the snake pit. I hope you're ready. What are you planning to wear?"

Heather looked down at her clothes, then back up at her. She hadn't thought about that.

"I figured."

* * *

Men's suits and jackets and women's formal wear were strewn all over the place. Peppermint Patty was having a fine time. Heather was dressed, except for her jewels, and Peppermint Patty was tying on a necklace.

"Don't feel bad about it. My friend Marcie still can't tie one of these damn things after two years. There you go."

She picked up a jacket off the bed and handed it to her. Heather went into the bathroom to put it on. Peppermint Patty started picking up the stuff off the bed.

"I gotta buy everything in three sizes 'cause I never know how much she's been eating while I'm away."

She turned and saw her.

"My, my, my...you shine up like a new penny."


	4. Munich to Vienna

In the west, the sky was purple, shot with orange. Strains of train noises and music drifted through the air. Heather walked along the deck. She looked dashing in her borrowed white dress, right down to her pearl necklace.

Conductor Mertens bowed and smartly opened the door to the entrance of the red car. "Bonsoir, mademoiselle. (Good evening, miss)"

Heather played the role smoothly. She nodded with just the right degree of disdain.

Heather stepped in, and her breath was taken away by the splendor spread out before her. It looked almost the same as the green car but it had a red carpet. Sweeping down 9 compartments forward was restaurant car, the atmosphere gave the epitome of the opulent architecture of the time.

And the people: the women in their floor-length dresses, elaborate hairstyles, and abundant jewelry...the gentlemen in evening dress, standing with one hand at the small of the back, talking quietly.

Heather descended to Compartment G. Several men nodded a perfunctory greeting. She nodded back, keeping it simple. She felt like a spy.

Lucy came down the corridor, with Sally on her arm, covered in jewelry. "Can you imagine how much of Herr Schmidt's merchandise is aboard this train?" Lucy asked, "Too many to count, where's my big brother." Sally said, "He'll be along." replied Lucy before turning towards Rebecca and Sophie, "Bonjour Rebecca." They both walked right past Heather, neither one recognizing her. Lucy nodded at her, one woman to another. But Heather barely had time to be amused. Because just behind Lucy and Sally on the stairs was Charlie, a vision in red and black, her low-cut suit showing off his white-tie neck and shoulders, his arms sheathed in white gloves that came well above the elbow. Heather was hypnotized by his handsomeness.

Charlie approached Heather. He imitated the gentlemen's stance, hand behind his back. She extended her gloved hand and he took it, kissing the backs of her fingers. Charlie flushed, beaming noticeably. He couldn't take his eyes off her.

"I saw that in a nickelodeon once, and I always wanted to do it."

Charlie laughed softly, then tapped Lucy's arm to get her attention. "Lucy, surely you remember Mlle. Dawson."

Lucy was caught off guard. "Heather Dawson! I didn't recognize you." He studied him. "Amazing! You could almost pass for a lady."

Heather raised an eyebrow. "Almost."

The party descended to dinner in the smoking parlor. They encountered Peppermint Patty, looking good in a beaded dress in her own busty, broad-shouldered way. Peppermint Patty grinned when she saw Heather. As they were going into the smoking car, she walked next to him, speaking low.

"Ain't nothing' to it, is there, Heather?"

"Yeah, you just dress like a pallbearer and keep your nose up."

"Remember, the only thing they respect is money, so just act like you've got a lot of it and you're in the club."

As they entered the swirling throng, Charlie leaned close to him, pointing out several notables.

"There's Sophie and Rebecca. And that's Count Vassili Obolensky ...the oldest man on the train. His little granddaughter there, Tatiana, is about six years older than me and in a state of childlike innocence. See how she's trying to hide her sweet looks from that man Alexei Dolnikov? Quite the scandal." He nodded toward a couple. "And over there, that's Sir August Schmidt and Anna Wolff. She once played at a violin concert in Carnegie Hall, among her many talents. Very popular with the Jewish culture."

Lucy became engrossed in a conversation with August Schmidt and the new passenger George Abbot, while Sally, Sophie, Rebecca, and Anna discussed fashion. Charlie pivoted Heather smoothly, to show her another couple with a 7 year old boy, dressed impeccably.

"And that's Claude Boutarel and his wife, Madame Boutarel. Francois is the boy in the sailor suit, of course."

Lucy, meanwhile, was accepting the praise of her male counterparts, who were looking at Charlie like a prize show horse.

"Van Pelt, he is splendid."

"Thank you." Lucy beamed as though she had been complimented.

"Lucy's a lucky woman. I know her well, and it can only be luck."

Sally stepped over, hearing the last. She took Lucy's arm, somewhat coquettishly. "How can you say that, Abbot? Lucy van Pelt is a great catch."

The entourage strolled toward the dining saloon, where they ran into the Obolenskys going through the ornate poster door.

"Vassili, Tatiana, I'd like you to meet Heather Dawson."

Obolensky shook Heather's hand. "Good to meet you, Heather. Вы говорите на русском языке из Бостона Dawsons? (Do you speak Russian from the Boston Dawsons?)"

Heather took a deep breath, refusing to hide her known languages and real background. "Not really, just some generic words from the Ohio Dawsons, actually."

Alexei Dolnikov nodded as if he'd heard of them, then looked puzzled. Tatiana Obolenskya appraised Heather and whispered boyishly to Charlie. "It's a pity we're both spoken for, isn't it?"

The dining saloon was like a ballroom at the palace, alive and lit by a constellation of electric fans, full of elegantly dressed people. Charlie and Heather entered and moved across the room to their table, Lucy and Sally beside them.

Heather was nervous, but she never faltered. They assumed she was one of them...heir to a railroad fortune...new money, obviously, but still a member of the club. Sally, of course, could always be counted upon to break the illusion.

"Tell us of the accommodations in the green car, Fraulein. Dawson. I hear they're quite good on this train."

Heather was seated opposite Charlie, who was flanked by Lucy, Tyler Whitney and Robert Cath. Also at the table were Peppermint Patty, Schmidt, George Abbot, Rebecca, Sophie, Prince Kronos, Kahina, and the Obolenskys.

"The best I've seen, ma'am. Hardly any rats."

Charlie motioned surreptitiously for Heather to take his napkin off his plate.

"Miss. Dawson is joining us from the green car. She was of some assistance to my fiancée last night." Lucy spoke to Heather as if to a child. "This is foie gras. It's goose liver." She searched through her handbag for a match to light a cigarette.

Heather pulled out her own matches and tossed them to her. "Here you go, Lucy."

Whispers were exchanged. Heather became the subject of furtive glances. Now they all felt terribly liberal and dangerous.

Kronos spoke in a low voice to Kahina who was standing next to him like she always did. "What is van Pelt hoping to prove, bringing this...bohemian...up here?"

A waiter spoke to Heather. "How do you take your caviar, madame?"

Lucy answered for her. "Just a soupcon of lemon..." She spoke to Heather, smiling. "...it improves the flavor with champagne."

Heather spoke to the waiter. "No caviar for me, thanks." She turned to Lucy. "Never did like it much."

She looked at Charlie, pokerfaced, and he smiled.

"And where exactly do you live, Mademoiselle. Dawson?" Sally asked, a haughty edge to her voice.

"Well, right now my address is the Orient Express. After that, I'm on God's good humor."

Salad was served. Heather reached for the fish fork. Charlie gave her a look and picked up the salad fork, prompting her with his eyes. She changed forks.

"You find that sort of rootless existence appealing, do you?" Sally persisted. Sophie eyed her at every word.

"Well...it's a big world, and I want to see it all before I go. My father was always talkin' about goin' to see the ocean. He died in the town he was born in, and never did see it. You can't wait around, because you never know what hand you're going to get dealt next. See, my folks died in a fire when I was fifteen, and I've been on the road since. Somethin' like that teaches you to take life as it comes at you. To make each day count."

Peppermint Patty raised her glass in salute. "Well said, Heather."

Abbot raised his glass. "Here, here."

Charlie raised his glass, looking at Heather. "To making it count." August and Anna gave their glass a small lift. "Nur Zucker, zwei Klumpen. (Just sugar, two lumps.)"

Sally, annoyed that Heather had scored a point, pressed her further. "How is it you have the means to travel, Miss. Dawson?"

"I work my way from place to place. Tramp steamers and such. I won my ticket on the Orient Express here in a lucky hand at poker." She glanced at Charlie. "A very lucky hand."

"All life is a game of luck." Abbot nodded in agreement.

"A real man makes his own luck, Georgie." Lucy spoke stiffly.

Charlie noticed that Robert Cath, sitting next to him, was writing in his notebook, completely ignoring the conversation.

"Mr. Cath, what are you doing? I see you everywhere writing in this little book." He grabbed it and read, "Increase number of screws in hat hooks from two to three. France built the longest train in the world and this preoccupies you?"

Whitney smiled sheepishly.

"He knows every rivet in her, don't you, Robert?" Tyler was as proud of the train as Cath.

"All three million of them."

"His blood and soul are in this train. She may be mine on paper, but in the eyes of God she belongs to Georges Nagelmackers, god rest his soul."

"This train is a wonder, Mr. Cath. Truly." Charlie gave him a bright smile.

"Thank you, Charlie." Cath had come under Charlie's spell.

* * *

Dessert had been served and a waiter arrived with cigars in a humidor on a wheeled cart. The men started clipping ends and lighting. Across the other side of the room, Francois Boutarel gave a few comments about his experiences. "Je ne savais même pas ces jolies dames dans l'autre voiture m'a donné des bonbons. Ainsi, après je vois une dame de serpent, à la fin du train, tout ce que je voulais, c'était une crêpe avec sauce au chocolat. (I didn't even know those pretty ladies in the other car gave me candy. So, after I see a snake lady at the end of the train, all I wanted was a crepe with chocolate sauce.)" Nearly everyone in the room laughed, much to his mother's dismay. "Et c'est comme ça que nous avons perdu notre première fortune. (And that's how we lost our first fortune.)" Madame Boutarel replied, mournfully.

Charlie spoke to Heather in a low voice. "Next it'll be brandies in the Smoking Car."

Abbot rose. "Well, join me for a brandy, gentlemen?"

Charlie whispered to Heather again, smirking. "Now they'll retreat into a cloud of smoke and congratulate each other on being masters of the universe."

August came forth. "Joining us, Dawson? You don't want to stay out here with the women, do you?"

Actually, she did, but...

"No, thanks. I'm heading back."

"Probably best. It'll be all business and politics, that sort of thing. Wouldn't interest you. Good of you to come." Lucy tossed back Heather's matchbox, and then she and the other gentlemen left the room.

"Heather, must you go?" Charlie was reluctant to see the evening end.

"Time for me to go row with the other slaves, my coach is about to turn back into a pumpkin." She leaned over to take his hand and slipped a tiny, folded note into his palm.

Sally, scowling, watched her walk away across the room. Charlie surreptitiously opened the note below table level. It read:

Make it count. Meet me at the Salzburg Bahnhof.

Charlie crossed the corridor sighting Heather and Fraulein Wolff at the conductor's station. Overhead was the lilac design. Heather had her back to his, studying the oak panel. It softly struck the hour.

Charlie went up the sleeping car toward them. They turned, saw him...smiled.

"Want to go to a real party?"

* * *

The pub in Salzburg was crowded and alive with music, laughter, and raucous carrying on. An ad hoc band was gathered near the upright piano, honking out lively stomping music on fiddle, accordion, tambourine and Anna on a violin. People of all ages were dancing, drinking beer and wine, smoking, laughing, even brawling.

Shermy handed Charlie a pint of stout and he hoisted it. Heather meanwhile danced with three-year-old Lila Cartmell, or tried to, with her standing on his feet. As the tune ended, Heather leaned down to the little boy.

"I'm going to dance with him now. All right?" He gave her a smile. "You're still my best boy, Lila."

Lila scampered off. Charlie and Heather faced each other. She was trembling as he took her right hand in his left. His other hand slid to the small of her back. It was an electrifying moment.

"I don't know the steps."

"Just move with me. Don't think."

The music started and they were off. A little awkward at first, he started to get into it. He grinned at Heather as he started to get the rhythm of the steps.

"Wait...stop!"

He bent down, pulling off his polished shoes, and flung them to Shermy. Then he grabbed Heather and they plunged back into the fray, dancing faster as the music sped up.

The scene was rowdy and rollicking. A table got knocked over as a drunk crashed into it. And in the middle of it...Charlie danced with Heather in his stocking feet. The steps were fast and he shone with sweat. A space opened around them, and people watched them, clapping as the band played faster and faster.

For Franklin and Janice, dancing had obviated the need for a common language. He whirled her, and then she responded by whirling him...Franklin's eyes went wide when he realized she was stronger than he was.

The tune ended in a mad rush. Heather stepped away from Charlie with a flourish, allowing her to take a bow. Exhilarated and slightly tipsy, she did a graceful ballet plié, feet turned out perfectly. Everyone laughed and applauded. Charlie was a hit with the drunken folks, who had never had a real gentleman party with them.

They moved to a table, flushed and sweaty. Charlie grabbed Franklin's cigarette and took a big drag. He was feeling cocky. Franklin was grinning, holding hands with Janice.

"How you two doin'?"

"I don't know what she's say, she don't know what I say, so we get along fine."

Shermy walked up with a pint for each of them. Charlie chugged his, showing off.

"You think a first class boy can't drink?"

Everybody else was dancing again, and Ivo Biskupovic and Salko Popivoda crashed into Shermy, who sloshed his beer over Charlie's suit. He laughed, not caring. But Shermy lunged, grabbing Ivo and wheeling him around.

"You stupid bastard!" "Нико ме не зове копиле! (Nobody calls me a bastard!)"

Ivo came around, his fists coming up...and Heather leapt into the middle of it, pushing them apart.

"Boys, boys! Did I ever tell you the one about the Serb and the Austrian goin' to the whorehouse?"

Shermy stood there, all piss and vinegar, chest puffed up. Then he grinned and clapped Ivo on the shoulder.

"So, you think you Serbs are big tough men? Let's see you do this."

In his stocking feet he assumed a ballet stance, arms raised, and went up on point, taking his entire weight on the tips of his toes. The guys gaped at his incredible muscle control. He came back down, and then his face screwed up in pain. He grabbed one foot, hopping around.

"Ow! I haven't done that in years."

Heather caught her as she lost her balance, and everyone cracked up.

The door to the pub was open a few inches as Schroeder watched through the gap. He saw Heather holding Charlie, both of them laughing.

Schroeder closed the door.

* * *

On the platform of Salzburg Hauptbahnhof, a few stars blazed overhead, so bright and clear they could see the Milky Way. Charlie and Heather walked along the row of train cars. Still giddy from the party, they were singing a popular song, "Come Josephine in My Flying Machine."

_Come Josephine in my flying machine_

_And it's up she goes!_

_Up she goes!_

_In the air she goes._

_Where?_

_There she goes!_

They fumbled the words and broke down laughing. They had reached the rear platform of the restaurant car, but didn't go straight in, not wanting the day to end. Through the doors the sound of Kronos' piano wafted gently. Charlie grabbed a pole and leaned back, staring at the cosmos.

"Look. Isn't it magnificent? So grand and endless." He went to the pole and leaned on it. "They're such small people, Heather...my crowd. They think they're giants on the earth, but they're not even dust in God's eye. They live inside this little tiny champagne bubble...and someday the bubble's going to burst."

She leaned at the pole next to his, her hand just touching his. It was the slightest contact imaginable, and all either one of them could feel was that square inch of skin where their hands were touching.

"You're not one of them. There's been a mistake."

"A mistake?"

"Uh-huh. You got mailed to the wrong address."

Charlie laughed. "I did, didn't I?" He pointed suddenly. "Look! A shooting star!"

"That was a long one. My father used to say that whenever you saw one, it was a soul going to heaven."

"I like that. Aren't we supposed to wish on it?"

Heather looked at him, and found that they were suddenly very close together. It would be so easy to move another couple of inches, to kiss him. Charlie seemed to be thinking the same thing.

"What would you wish for?" Heather asked him.

After a moment, Charlie pulled back.

"Something I can't have." He smiled sadly. "Good day, Heather. And thank you." He left the pole and hurried through the rear platform of the dining car.

"Charlie!"

But the door banged shut, and he was gone. Back to his world.

* * *

It was a bright, clear day. Sunlight splashed across the smoking car. Charlie and Lucy were having a snack in silence while Tatiana and Alexei played chess. The tension was palpable. Linus and Rerun, in butler uniforms, poured the coffee and went inside.

"I had hoped you would come to me after lunch." Lucy spoke quietly.

"I'm just tired." Charlie tensed, looking at him.

"Yes. Your exertions in the pub were no doubt exhausting."

Charlie stiffened. "I see you had that undertaker of a manservant follow me."

"You will never behave like that again! Do you understand?"

"I'm not some foreman in your mills that you can command! I am your fiancée—"

Lucy exploded, sweeping the china off the table with a crash and onto Alexei and Tatiana's chess board, knocking the pieces over. She moved to him in one shocking moment, glowering over him and gripping the sides of his chair, so he was trapped between her arms.

"Yes! You are! And my wife...in practice, if not yet by law. So you will honor me, as a wife is required to honor her husband! I will not be made out a fool! Is this in any way unclear?"

Charlie shrank into the chair. He saw Linus, frozen, partway through the door bringing the orange juice. Lucy followed Charlie's glance and straightened up. She and Alexei stalked past the boy, for the private car. Tatiana was also frozen from the interruption.

Charlie was almost in tears. "We...had a little accident. I'm sorry, Linus."

* * *

In the bedroom of the _Saturn_, Sally was dressed for the day, and was in the middle of helping Charlie with his white tie. The task did not inhibit Sally's fury at all.

"You are not to see that girl again. Do you understand me, Big Brother? I forbid it!"

Sally had her knee at the base of her brother's back and was pulling the tie with both hands, nearly choking him.

Charlie sighed. "Oh, stop it, Sally. You'll give yourself a nosebleed."

Sally pulled away from him and walked to the door, locking it with a click.

She wheeled on Charlie. "Big Brother, this is not a game! Our situation is precarious. You know the money's gone!"

"Of course I know it's gone. You remind me every day!"

"Our parents left us nothing but a legacy of bad debts, hidden by a good name. And that name is the only card we have to play."

Sally turned Charlie around and grabbed the tie strings again. Charlie sucked in his waist and Sally pulled.

"I don't understand you. It is a fine match with Van Pelt, and it will insure our survival."

Charlie looked at his little sister, hurt and lost. "How can you put this on my shoulders?"

Sally turned to her, and Charlie saw the naked fear in her sister's eyes.

"Do you want to see me working as a seamstress? Is that what you want? Do you want to see our fine things sold at auction, our memories scattered to the winds? Good grief, Charlie Brown, how can you be so selfish?"

"It's so unfair."

"Of course it's unfair! We're children. Our choices are never easy."

Sally pulled the necktie tighter.

* * *

At the concert, Kronos and Anna were playing César Franck's _Sonata in A major for Violin and Piano_. Charlie and Sally sat in the middle of the group.

Schroeder stood well back, keeping an eye on Charlie. He noticed a commotion at the entry doors. Kahina had halted Heather there. She was dressed in her third class clothes, and stood there, hat in hand, looking out of place.

Kahina spoke to Heather. "Look, you, you're not supposed to be in here while a concert is in progress."

"I was just here last night...don't you remember?" She saw Schroeder coming toward him. "He'll tell you."

Schroeder had reached the group. "Ms. Van Pelt and Ms. Brown continue to be most appreciative of your assistance. They asked me to give you this in gratitude—"

He held out two twenty-dollar bills, which Heather refused to take.

"I don't want money, I—"

"—and also to remind you that you hold a third class ticket and your presence here is no longer appropriate."

Heather spotted Charlie, but she didn't see him.

"I just need to talk to Charlie for a—"

"Kahina, please see that Ms. Dawson gets back where she belongs." Schroeder gave the twenties to Kahina. "And that she stays there."

"Yes, sir!" Kahina spoke to Heather. "Come along, you."

Charlie did not see Heather hustled out.

He sung to himself. "Oh, hear us when we cry to thee, for those in peril on the sea."

The gymnasium in Amstetten resembled an Edwardian nautilus room. There were machines still in use in the late twentieth century, and machines that had long since been cast aside.

A woman pedaled a stationary bicycle in a long dress, looking ridiculous. Robert Cath was leading a small tour group, including Charlie, Sally, and Lucy. Lucy was working the oars of a stationary rowing machine with a well-trained stroke.

"Reminds me of my Harvard days," She told them, rising.

The gym instructor, was a bouncy little man in white flannels, eager to show off his modern equipment, like his later counterpart on an Abflex infomercial. He hit a switch and a machine with a saddle on it started to undulate. Charlie put his hand on it, curious.

"The electric horse is very popular. We even have an electric camel." He turned to Sally. "Care to try your hand at the rowing, ma'am?"

"Don't be absurd. I can't think of a skill I should likely need less."

Cath gestured to the group. "The next stop on our tour will be the station. This way, please."

Heather, walking with determination, was followed closely by Shermy and Franklin. She quickly crossed and stepped over to another train, to be exact the Nord Express.

Shermy shook his head. "He's a god amongst mortal women, there's no denying. But he's in another world, Heather, forget him. He's closed the door."

Heather moved furtively to the wall behind the red sleeping car. "It was them, not him." Heather glanced around the platform. "Ready...go."

Shermy shook his head resignedly and put his hands together, crouching down. Heather stepped into Shermy's hands and got boosted up to the next deck, where she scrambled nimbly over the railing, onto the opposite end of the red sleeping car.

Shermy watched her go from the other train, still shaking his head. "She's not being logical, I tell you."

Franklin shrugged. "Amore is'a not logical."

A man was playing with his son, who was spinning a top with a string. The man's overcoat and hat were sitting on a deck chair nearby. Heather emerged from behind one of the huge luggage carriers and calmly picked up the coat and bowler hat. She walked away, slipping into the coat, and slicked her hair back with spit. Then she put the hat on at a jaunty angle. At a distance she could pass for a gentleman.

* * *

At RAF Larkhill, Herbert Musgrave, the Wireless Operator, hustled in and skirted around a group of troops to hand a Marconigram to Captain Roy Brown. "Another case of Bosnian activity, sir. This one's from Tzaribrod."

"Thank you, sir." Brown glanced at the message, then nonchalantly put it in his pocket. He nodded reassuringly to the troops. "Not to worry. It's quite normal for this time of year. In fact, we're speeding up the training. I've just ordered a few firearms."

Back at Amstetten, Cath scowled slightly before motioning the group toward the door. They exited just as Milos came out of the sleeping car stopping next to Vesna.

"Да ли ћемо икада учитати те пушке? (Did we ever load those guns?)" Milos asked Vesna.

"Нисам планирала то. (Haven't been planning that.)" Vesna replied, shrugging.

Cath led the group back from the platform along the sleeping cars.

"Mr. Cath, I did the sum in my head, and with the number of Herr Schmidt's munitions times the capacity you mentioned...forgive me, but it seems that there are enough to start a revolution." Charlie looked at Cath in concern.

"About half, actually. Charlie, you miss nothing, do you? In fact, I put in these new Pullman designs for the Peninsular-Express, which can take an extra combination of sleeper and restaurant." Cath gestured along the platform. "But it was thought...by some...that the car would look too cluttered. So I was overruled."

Lucy slapped the side of a window. "Waste of car length as it is, on an intercontinental train!"

Cath ignored him, turning to Charlie. "Sleep soundly, young Charlie. They have built you a good train, strong and true. She's all the safety you need."

As they were passing compartment A, a gentleman turned from the rear platform and walked up behind the group. It was Heather. She tapped Charlie on the arm and he turned, gasping. She motioned and he cut away from the group toward a door, which Heather held open. They ducked into the compartment of Tatiana Obolenskya.

Heather closed the door behind her, and glanced out through the washroom to the opposite compartment, where Tatiana was making her grandfather's tea. Charlie and Heather were alone in the room.

Charlie tried to walk away. "Heather, this is impossible. I can't see you."

She took him by the shoulders. "Charlie, you're no picnic...you're a spoiled little brat even, but under that you're a strong, pure heart, and you're the most amazingly astounding boy I've ever known, and—"

"Heather, I—"

"No, wait. Let me try to get this out. You're amazing...and I know I have nothing to offer you, Charlie. I know that. But I'm involved know. You jump, I jump, remember? I can't turn away without knowing you're going to be all right."

Charlie felt the tears coming to his eyes. Heather was so open and real...not like anyone he had ever known. "You're making this very hard. I'll be fine. Really."

"I don't think so. They've got you in a glass jar like some butterfly, and you're going to die if you don't break out. Maybe not right away, because you're strong. But sooner or later the fire in you is going to go out."

"It's not up to you to save me, Heather."

"You're right. Only you can do that."

"I have to get back; they'll miss me. Please, Heather, for both our sakes, leave me alone."

Charlie ran out onto the corridor. Heather watched him go, through the door of the compartment...like a figure underwater.

* * *

In the dining car. Charlie sat on a divan, with a group of other women arrayed around him. Sally, Rebecca and Sophie were taking tea. Charlie was silent and still as a porcelain figurine as the conversation washed around him. "Tell us more about the Madame Caillaux trial." asked Rebecca.

Sally, however, was complaining about the wedding arrangements. "Of course her invitation had to be sent back to the printers twice. And the bridesmaid's dresses! Let me tell you what an odyssey that has been, Big Brother here decided he wanted lavender. He knows I detest the color. He did it to spite me." Sophie joined in on the conversation. "If only you'd come to me sooner. Rebecca a vu certains des dessins dans "La Mode Illustrée". Ils étaient de mon ami qui vit sur l'île de Joséphine. Ils étaient tout à fait charmant. (Rebecca saw some of the designs in "La Mode Illustree". They were of my friend Josephine who lives on the island. They were quite charming.)" Rebecca put her right hand on her friend's lap. "Mais je pense que vous serez d'accord, ma chère Sophie, que tous ensemble nous avons créé quelque chose d'un phénix de ses cendres. (But I think you will agree, my dear Sophie, that together we have created something of a phoenix from the ashes.)"

Charlie's mind was elsewhere as Sally went on. He saw, at another table, Madame Boutarel and François having tea. Francois daintily picked up a cookie. His mother corrected him on his posture, and the way he held the teacup. The little boy was trying so hard to please, her expression serious. It was as though Charlie was glimpsing himself at that age, remembering the relentless conditioning and although he could not completely understand Sophie and Rebecca's conversing in French, Charlie could tell it was not a pretty picture... it was the path to becoming an Edwardian lesbian.

Charlie calmly and deliberately turned his teacup over, spilling tea all over the table. "Aaugh!" He got to his feet, excusing himself.

"Oh, look what I've done." He hurried away.

* * *

The Orient Express stood in the sullen sky of Vienna Westbahnof, as if lit by the embers of a giant fog. As the train sat there for over an hour, someone stood near the locomotive. Heather was there, right at the apex of the buffers, her favorite spot. She closed her eyes, letting the chilling rain clear her head.

Heather heard Charlie's voice, behind her.

"Hello, Heather."

She turned, and he was standing there.

"I changed my mind."

She smiled at his, her eyes drinking him in. His cheeks were red with the chill wind, and his eyes sparkled. His hair blew wildly about his face.

"Franklin said you might be up—"

"Shh. Come here."

She put her hands on his waist, as if she was going to kiss him.

"Close your eyes."

He did, and she turned him to face forward, the way the train was going. She pressed him gently to the main door, standing right behind him.

"Okay, step up out here." She helped him up. "Do you trust me?"

He nodded. "I trust you."

She took his two hands and raised them until he was standing with his arms outstretched on each side. Charlie was going along with her. When he lowered his hands, his arms stayed up...like wings.

"Okay. Open them."

Charlie gasped. There was nothing in his field of vision but rain, It was like there was no roof under them at all, just the two of them soaring. The rain unrolled toward him, a hammered copper shield under a sullen sky. There was only the wind, and the pattering of the water fifty feet above.

"I'm flying, Heather! I'm flying!"

He leaned forward, arching his back. She put her hands on his waist to steady him.

Heather sang softly in Charlie's ear. "Come Josephine in my flying machine..."

Charlie closed his eyes, feeling himself floating weightless far above the city of Vienna. He smiled dreamily, then leaned back, gently pressing his back against her chest. She pushed forward slightly against him.

Slowly, he raised her hands, arms outstretched, and they met his...fingertips gently touching. Then their fingers intertwined. Moving slowly, their fingers caressed through and around each other like the bodies of two lovers.

Heather tipped her face forward into her blowing hair, letting the scent of her wash over him, until his cheek was against her ear.

Charlie turned his head until his lips were near hers. He lowered his arms, turning further, until he found her mouth with his. She wrapped her arms around him from behind, and they kissed like this, with her head turned, and tilted back, surrendering to him, to the emotion, to the inevitable. They kissed, slowly and tremulously, and then with building passion.

Heather and the train seemed to merge into one force of power and optimism, lifting her, buoying her forward on a magical journey, soaring onward into a night without fear.

In the locomotive, behind them, the engineer nudged his mate, the fireman, pointing down at the figures in the entrance arch.

The engineer shook his head. "Волела сам те крварења двоглед. (Wish I had those bleeding binoculars.)"

Charlie and Heather, embracing at the entrance, stepped slowly away, leaving the station.


	5. Vienna to Budapest

The beautiful, opulent woodwork and satin upholstery of Kronos' palace in Vienna overwhelmed Heather for a moment. She set her sketchbook and drawing materials on the marble table.

Charlie switched on the lights. "Will this light do? Don't artists need good light?"

Heather responded in a bad French accent. "Zat is true, I am not used to working in such 'orreeble conditions." She saw the paintings. "Hey...Marc!"

She crouched next to the paintings stacked against the wall.

"Isn't he great...the use of color. I saw him once...when Monet drew a hole in his garden fence in Giverny."

Charlie went into the adjoining walk-in closet. Heather saw him go to the safe and start working the combination. She was fascinated.

"Lucy insists on lugging this thing everywhere," Charlie told her, turning the dial.

Heather didn't want to have to deal with Lucy. "Should I be expecting her anytime soon?"

"Not as long as the cigars and brandy hold out."

With a clunk, he unlocked the safe. Glancing up, he met her eyes in the mirror behind the safe. He opened it and removed the egg, then held it out to Heather, who took it nervously.

"What is it? A globe?"

"An egg. A 1650 Chinese egg, called the Firebird."

Clicking on the gems, the egg had transformed into a big and beautiful golden bird, Heather gazed at wealth beyond his comprehension.

"I want you to draw me like your French boy. Carrying this." She smiled at him. "Without the whistle."

She looked up at him, surprised.

Charlie smoothed the butterfly comb into his hair. He took it out, shook his head and his hair fell free around his shoulders.

In the sitting room Heather was laying out her pencils like surgical tools. Her sketchbook was open and ready. She looked up as he came into the room, wearing a silk kimono.

"The last thing I need is another picture of me looking like a china doll. As a paying customer, I expect to get what I want."

He handed her a dime and stepped back, opening the kimono to reveal the Firebird. The mechanical bird lay on his creamy arm. His heart was pounding as he slowly took it out from the robe.

Heather looked so stricken, it was almost comical. The kimono's jewelry dropped to the floor.

"Over there...on the bed—I mean, uh, the couch," Heather stammered, staring at him.

"Tell me when it looks right to you."

He posed on the divan, settling like a cat into the position from the drawing...almost.

"Uh...just bend your left leg a little and...and lower your head. Eyes to me. That's it."

Heather started to sketch. She dropped her pencil and she stifled a laugh.

"I believe you are blushing, Mrs. Big Artiste. I can't imagine Monsieur Marc blushing."

Heather was sweating. "He does the futuristic movement."

Her eyes came up to look at him over the top edge of her sketchpad. It was an image she would carry the rest of his life.

Despite her nervousness, she drew with sure strokes, and what emerged was the best thing she had ever done. His pose was languid, his hands beautiful, and his eyes radiated his energy.

Heather was signing the drawing. Charlie was still wearing his kimono, was leaning on his shoulder, watching.

Charlie gazed at the drawing. She had X-rayed his soul. "Date it, Heather. I want to always remember this night."

He did: 7/25/1914. Charlie, meanwhile, scribbled a note on a piece of Orient Express stationary. He didn't say what it said. She accepted the drawing from him, and went to the safe in the compartment I.

She closed the Firebird back into its egg form and put it back in the box, placing the drawing and the note inside of it. She closed the door with a clunk.

* * *

Schroeder entered from the smoking salon through the red sleeping car and crossed the room toward van Pelt. The usual fatcats were playing cards, drinking, and talking. Lucy saw Schroeder and detached from her group, coming to him.

Schroeder spoke quietly. "Coudert and Mertens have not seen him."

Lucy's voice was low but forceful. "This is ridiculous, Schroeder. Find him."

* * *

The Orient Express glided across the unnatural country of Hungary, the ground was black and calm as a pool of oil. The train's lights were mirrored almost perfectly in the black water of the rivers that passed. The sky was brilliant with stars. A meteor traced a bright line across the heavens.

In compartment G, Milos peered out at the blackness ahead of the train. He had brought himself a cup of hot tea with lemon. It steamed in the bitter cold of the open air. Vesna was next to him, staring out at the sheet of black glass the Austro-Hungarian Empire had become.

"Ја не мислим да сам икада видео овако мирно призор. (I don't think I've ever seen such a peaceful sight.)" Vesna looked at Milos in concern.

"Да, као воденички рибњак. Није дах ветра. Или чак непријатељски преузимање. (Yes, like a millpond. Not a breath of wind. Or even a hostile takeover.)" Milos did not seem worried about the lives of the passengers.

"Можемо умрети борбе или пате у мађарском затвору ако сматрају полицију чека августа Сцхмидт у Будимпешти. (We can die fighting or suffer in a Hungarian prison if they find the police waiting for August Schmidt at Budapest.)"

"Ммм. Па, ја сам искључен. Реци Салко и Иво остане у пртљагу колима до тада, Весна. (Mmm. Well, I'm off. Tell Salko and Ivo to remain in the baggage car until then, Vesna.)"

"Да. (Yes)."

"И упозоравају ме, наравно, ако ништа друго постаје у најмању степену сумњивог. (And warn me, of course, if anything becomes in the slightest degree doubtful.)"

Charlie, fully dressed now in his casual outfit, returned to the rear platform of the green car. They heard the door opening Charlie took Heather's hand and led her silently through the rear baggage car. Schroeder entered by the door.

"Mr. Charlie? Hello?"

He heard a door opening and went through the baggage hold toward the desk.

Charlie and Heather came out of the rear baggage car, closing the door. She led him quickly along the corridor toward the next sleeping car. They were halfway across the open space when the door opened in the corridor and Schroeder came out. The valet saw Heather with Charlie and hustled after them.

Charlie saw him coming. "Come on!"

He and Heather broke into a run, surprising the few ladies and gentlemen about. Charlie led her past the hall to the compartments of the red car. They ran into compartment E, shocking the hell out of the conductor.

"Hide in here. Quickly, quickly!"

The conductor scrambled to comply. Heather even helped him close the door Schroeder ran up as the door slammed in his face. Charlie made a very rude and gesture, and laughed as Schroeder went unconscious. The conductor gaped at him.

Schroeder regained consciousness and went into the compartment Heather and Charlie were in. He ran around the room and scanned the whole thing...no Heather and Charlie. There was nowhere else to try.

The rear platform of the dining car was a functional space, with access to the one room. Heather and Charlie were leaning against a wall, laughing.

"Pretty tough for a valet, this fellow. He seems more like a cop."

"He's an ex-Pinkerton. Lucy's father hired him to keep Lucy out of trouble...to make sure she always got back to the hotel with her wallet and watch, after some crawl through the less reputable parts of town..."

"Kind of like we're doing right now—uh-oh!"

Schroeder had recovered nearby. He was walking toward them. Heather and Charlie ran around a corner into the dining car. There was one door, actually a red curtain, and Heather flung it open.

They entered the kitchen, with no way out but a corridor going down. Heather latched the deadbolt on a door, and Schroeder slammed against it a moment later. Heather grinned at Charlie, pointing to the corridor.

"After you, my lady."

Heather and Charlie came further into the kitchen and looked around to see the cook arguing with his aide. "Plus mince, je l'ai dit, les couper plus mince! Êtes-vous sourd ou juste simple? (Thinner, I said, slice them thinner! Are you deaf or just simple?)" They ran the length of the kitchen, dodging the amazed cook, and waiters with their trays of food and drinks.

Heather shouted over the din. "Carry on! Don't mind us! You're doin' a great job!"

They ran through the corridor into the baggage car. Heather pulled him through the fiercely claustrophobic alley between two oven, and they wound up in the dark, out of sight of the kitchen staff. Watching from the shadows, they saw the cook and his aide working in the steamy glow, slicing the carrots into the insatiable maws of the boiling pot. The whole place thundered with the roar of the oven.

Amid unparalleled luxury, Lucy sat at a card game, sipping brandy.

George Abbot was praising the train's speed. "We're going like hell, I tell you. I have fifty dollars that says we make it into Constantinople tomorrow night!"

Lucy looked at her gold pocket watch and scowled, not listening.

The oven roared, silhouetting the glistening kitchen staff. Heather kissed Charlie's face, tasting the sweat trickling down from his forehead. They kissed passionately in the steamy, pounding darkness.

* * *

Heather and Charlie entered the baggage car and ran laughing between the hallway. He hugged himself against the cold, after the dripping heat of the kitchen.

They came upon the personnel compartment, lashed down to a pallet. It looked like a royal coach from a fairy tale, its brass trim and light bulbs nicely set off by its deep burgundy color.

Charlie climbed into the plushly upholstered personnel compartment, acting very royal. There were cut crystal bud vases on the walls back there, each containing a Charlie. Heather jumped into the right seat, enjoying the feel of the leather and wood.

"Where to, Miss?" He looked back at her, enjoying the game.

"To the stars."

His hands came out of the shadows and pulled her over the right seat into the back. He landed next to her, and his breathing seemed loud in the quiet darkness. He looked at her, and she was smiling. It was the moment of truth.

"Are you nervous?" she whispered.

He shook his head. "No."

She stroked his face, cherishing him. He kissed her artist's fingers.

"Put your hands on me, Heather."

She kissed her, and he slid down in the seat under her welcome weight.

* * *

In the RAF base, a brilliant arc of electricity arched in the machine—the spark gap of the Marconi instrument as senior wireless operator Henry Tabor rapidly keyed out a message. Junior operator Musgrave looked through the huge stack of outgoing messages swamping them.

"Look at this one. Jean Jaures wants his private train to meet him. La dee da." Musgrave slapped them down. "We'll be up all bloody night on this lot."

Tabor started to receive an incoming message from a distant shipyard, occupied by a Leyland freighter, which jammed his outgoing signal. At such close range, the beeps were deafening.

"Christ! It's that idiot Marshall Putnik." Cursing, Tabor furiously keyed a rebuke.

Serbian general Živojin Mišić pulled his earphones off his ears as the RAF's spark deafened him. He translated the English written message for Marshall Radomir Putnik.

"Глупо копиле. Трудим се да га упозори о мобилизацији, а он каже: 'Држи се. Ћути. Радим на наоружању договор. (Stupid bastard. I try to warn him about the mobilization, and he says, 'Keep out. Shut up. I'm working on an arms deal.)'"

"Сада шта он шаље? (Now what's he's sending?)"

"'Не морска болест. Покер посао добро. Ал '. Па, то је то за мене. Ја сам гаси. (No seasickness. Poker business good. Al.' Well, that's it for me. I'm shutting down.)"

As Mišić wearily switched off his generator, Putnik went outside. The building was fifty yards from the edge of a field of packed munitions and army trains stretching as far as the eye could see.

* * *

The Orient Express was steaming hell-bent through the Hungarian darkness, hurling up white water at the locomotive. The engine moved straight ahead, raising a giant puff of smoke in its wake.

The window of the personnel compartment was completely fogged up. Charlie's hand came up and slammed against the glass for a moment, making a handprint in the veil of condensation.

Inside the baggage car, Heather's overcoat was like a blanket over them. It stirred, and Charlie pulled it down. They were huddled under it, intertwined, still mostly clothed. Their faces were flushed and they looked at each other wonderingly. He put his hand on her face, as if making sure she was real.

"You're trembling," he whispered.

"It's okay. I'm all right." She laid her cheek against his chest. "I can feel your heart beating."

He hugged her head to his chest, and just held on for dear life.

He wasn't the first pre-teen boy to get seduced in the personnel compartment of a baggage car, and certainly not the last, by several million. She had such fine hands, artist's hands, but strong too...roughened by work. He remembered their touch even after eighty-four years.

The locomotive swept along, and toward the foremast, in the half-cylinder of the rear platform of the baggage car, were the Serbs Ivo and Salko. They were stamping their feet and swinging their arms, trying to keep warm in the twenty-two knot freezing wind, which whipped the vapor of their breath away behind.

" Можете намирисати рат, знате, када је близу, (You can smell war, you know, when it's near,)" Ivo said to Salko.

"Глупости. (Bollocks.)"

"Па, ја могу. (Well, I can.)"

Their words barely audible over the roar of the moving train, the chef and his apprentice told Trainmaster Verges which way Charlie and Heather went. He moved off toward his desk.

* * *

In compartment I of the red car, Lucy stood at the open box. She stared at the drawing of Charlie, and her face clenched with fury and "crabbiness". She read the note again: Darling, now you can keep us both locked in your safe. Charlie.

Schroeder, standing behind her, looked over her shoulder at the drawing. Lucy crumpled Charlie's note, then took the drawing in both hands as if to rip it in half. She tensed to do it, then stopped herself.

"I have a better idea."

* * *

Trainmaster Verges left his desk. He had an electric torch and played the beam around the hold. He looked at the personnel compartment and approached it slowly.

The torch lit up Charlie's passionate handprint, still there on the door. Verges whipped open the door.

"Monsieur, the baggage car is off…limits?"

The personnel compartment was empty.


	6. Runaway Train!

Charlie and Heather, fully dressed, came through the door onto the forward platform of the restaurant car. They could barely stand, they were laughing so hard.

Up above them, in the rear end of the baggage car Ivo heard the disturbance and looked around and back down to the dining saloon, where he could see two figures embracing.

Heather and Charlie stood in each other's arms. Their breath clouded around them in the now freezing air, but they didn't even feel the cold because they were inside.

"When this train arrives in Budapest, I'm getting off with you," Charlie told Heather.

"This is crazy."

"I know. It doesn't make any sense. That's why I trust it."

Heather pulled him to her and kissed him fiercely.

In the rear end of the baggage car, Ivo nudged Salko.

" Види ти то, да ли би. (Look at that, would you.)"

" Они су крвави призор топлије него ми. (They're a blilos sight warmer than we are.)"

" Па, ако је то оно што је потребно за нас двојицу да се топло, радије не бих, ако је то све исто. (Well, if that's what it takes for us two to get warm, I'd rather not, if it's all the same.)"

They both had a good laugh at that one. It was Ivo whose expression fell first. Glancing forward again, he did a double take. The color drained out of his face.

The massive Budapest Keleti station was right in the train's path, five hundred yards out.

" Сада је наша шанса! (Now's our chance!)"

Ivo reached past Salko and rang the bells on his sleeves three times, then went into the kitchen, calling for Milos. He waited precious seconds for him to show up, never taking his eyes off the eclectic styled station ahead.

"Хајде Милоша, лења копиле! (Come on Milos, you lazy bastard!)"

Inside the kitchen, Milos walked unhurriedly to Ivo, picking him up by the shoulders.

"Где си био? (Where have you been?)" Ivo was getting frantic.

"Шта је сад? (What is it now?)"

"Будимпешта Келети десно напред! (Budapest Keleti right ahead!)"

"Хвала. (Thank you.)" Milos walked up, and called to Vesna. "Будимпешта Келети десно напред! (Budapest Keleti right ahead!)"

Vesna saw it and rushed to the baggage compartment. While signaling to have the alarm cut, she yelled to Milos, who was about to climb up to the top of the car.

"Исеците кочнице! (Cut the brakes!)"

Milos was standing behind Vesna. "Исеците кочнице. Ми смо преузимањем. (Cut the brakes. We're taking over.)"

The engineer was just checking the soup he had warming on a steam manifold when the engine's safety valve clanged, then went...unbelievably...to 28 miles an hour. He and the fireman just stared at it a second, unbelieving. Then he reacted.

"Процуре у пару вентила! (Leak in the steam valves!)"

The engineer and driver scrambled like madmen to close the steam valves and start breaking the locomotive, at the station, to a stop.

In Schmidt Steel Works, a newsvendor was standing with the front page of newspaper, turning the red warning light and stop indicator came on.

"Serbien antwortet Österreich! Zusätzliche Papier! (Serbia answers Austria! Extra paper!)"

From atop the coal tender, Milos watched the station growing...straight ahead. The locomotive finally started to slow down, since the train nearly switched in reverse.

Milos' jaw clenched as the locomotive turned with agonizing slowness. He held his breath as the horrible deed was about to be played out.

In the rear platform, Ivo braced himself.

With the sound of a gunshot and the push of the lever, the locomotive thundered ahead, and, with a jolt, the train rocketed through the station on a total speed of 60 miles per hour.

Under the wheels, the rails were rumbling like loose steel hull plates. The platforms of Budapest Keleti bumped and scraped along the side of the train. Rivets popped as the teak paneling of the sleeping cars flexed under the load.

In the baggage car, the trainmaster staggered as his desk buckled in four feet with a sound like thunder. Like a sledgehammer beating along outside the train, the train lurched forward, sweeping him off his feet. The rush swirled around him as he scrambled to the sleeping cars.

On the Nord Express, Franklin was tossed in his bunk by the sound of an alarm. It was like the greatly amplified squeal of a skate on ice.

In Petrograd, Russia, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky staggered as they heard the rolling thunder of the Liberals. They saw one side move in toward them and were almost swept off their feet by a rush of angry shouts coming in about two feet above the building.

In the kitchen of the restaurant car, Heather and Charlie broke their kiss and looked up in astonishment as the station sailed past, blocking out the sky like a mountain. A few people were appearing to have been hit by the speeding wagons and crashed down onto the platform, as if they were injured.

On the locomotive, Milos rang the engineer's ear. He quickly told him to grab the coal spade. "Држите лопатања! (Keep shoveling!)" Judging the parked freight wagons to be amid several other passenger trains, he was trying to clear the station.

Lenin and Trotsky heard the door alarm and scrambled through the swirling mob to the door of the government office between the streets. The room was full of anarchists as they struck the hard wooden gates. Lenin yelled to the anarchists scrambling through the door as it came down like a slow guillotine.

"Успокойтесь ребята! Успокойтесь! Успокойтесь! (Calm lads! Calm! Calm!)"

He dived through into boiler room five just before the door rumbled down with a clang.

Heather and Charlie rushed to the window in time to see the station moving away from the train.

In his compartment, surrounded by piles of plans while makes notes in his ever-present book, Cath and Whitney looked up at the sound of his matchbox tinkling like a wind chime.

He felt the shudder run through the train. And it showed in his face. Too much of his soul was in this great train for him not to feel its mortal wound.

In the smoking salon, Abbot watched his glass of cognac vibrating on the table.

In compartment 2, with its window, Peppermint Patty held up her drink to a passing individual.

"Hey, can I get some ice here, please?"

Silently, the station filled the windows behind her. She didn't see it. Nor did she see Vesna putting a rifle at her.

In the rear platform, Ivo turned to Salko.

"Ој, друже ... изгледа да ћемо вратити нашу земљу. (Oy, mate...looks like we'll get our land back.)"

"Мирис рат, зар не? Крварење Христа! (Smell war, can you? Bleeding Christ!)"

* * *

The alarm bells still clattered mindlessly, seeming to reflect the inspector's inner state. He was in shock, unable to get a grip on what just happened. He had just run the luxurious train in history past Budapest Keleti on a seemingly innocent voyage.

Vesna spoke stiffly to Milos. "Обратите пажњу на време. Заокружују путнике. (Note the time. Round up the passengers.)"

At the station, the owner rushed out of his cabin onto the inspector's desk, tucking in his shirt.

"Mi volt ez, felügyelõ? (What was that, Inspector?)"

"A vonat éppen eltérített, uram. A motor futott gyorsan, de nem volt túl közel. Próbáltam megállítani, de ez elment ... és I- (A train has just been hijacked, sir. The engine was running fast, but it was too close. I tried to stop it, but it's gone...and I—)"

"Zárja le a kapukat. (Close the gates.)"

"A kapuk hajótörést szenvedett. (The gates are wrecked.)"

Together they rushed out onto the platform, and he pointed at the scrape. The manager looked into the damage, then wheeled around to the inspector.

"Keresse meg a jelet a férfiak és rávenni, hogy hagyja abba a szökött. (Find the signalmen and get him to stop the runaway.)"

* * *

In the Nord Express, Franklin came out into the corridor to see what was going on. He saw dozens of rats running toward him in the corridor, fleeing the train. Franklin jumped aside as a rat ran by. "Ma che cazzo!"

In his compartment, Shermy got out of his top bunk in the dark and dropped down to the floor.

"Cor! What in hell?"

He snapped on the light. The train was stopped to let the Express pass. He pulled the door open, and stepped out into the corridor, which was flooded with passengers. Franklin was running toward him, yelling something in Italian. Shermy and Franklin started pounding on doors, getting everybody up and out. The alarm spread in several languages.

A couple of people had come out into the corridor of the Pension Hotel in Neuilly-sur-Seine in robes and slippers. A hotel steward hurried along, reassuring them.

"Why has an alarm sounded? I heard some sort of news," a woman asked him.

"I shouldn't worry, madame. We've likely had a hijacking in Hungary. That's the news you felt. May I bring you anything?"

Hugh Trenchard brushed past them, walking fast and carrying an armload of rolled up military plans.

* * *

Heather and Charlie were leaning over the window, looking at the hull of the coach.

"Looks okay. I don't see anything, other than the fact that we didn't stop." Heather said to Charlie.

"Could the speed have damaged the train?"

"It didn't seem like much of a bump. I'm sure we're okay."

Behind them the chef, his apprentice and a few waiters were kicking the ice around in the kitchen, laughing. Charlie picked up a piece of ice and dropped it down the back of Heather's skirt. She yelled, jumping around, trying to reach the ice.

"Okay, Charlie. Now I'm throwing you overboard!" She picked him up.

Charlie squealed in mock terror. "No! No, Heather!" They both burst out laughing.

Franklin and Shermy were in a crowd of men clogging the corridor, heading aft away from the stopping. Many of them had grabbed suitcases and duffel bags, some of which were filthy.

"If this is the direction the rats were running, it's good enough for me," Shermy shouted, hurrying forward.

August Schmidt, dressed in blue suit under a topcoat, hurried down the corridor, headed for his compatment. The counductor Jacques Coudert came along the other direction, getting the few concerned passengers back into their rooms.

"There's no cause for alarm. Please, go back to your rooms."

Lucy and Schroeder stopped him in his tracks.

"Please, mademoiselle. There's no emergency—"

"Yes, there is. I've been robbed. Now get the Chef-de-train. Now, you moron." Lucy was losing patience.

Captain Brown was studying the commutator.

He turned to the Viscount, standing behind him.

"A five degree list in less than ten minutes."

A carpenter entered behind him, out of breath and clearly unnerved.

"There're mobilizing fast...in the fields and all over the place."

In compartment 3 aboard the train, Schmidt entered, his movements quick with anger and frustration. Mertens glanced at him with annoyance.

"Why have we not stopped at Budapest?"

"We've been hijacked."

"Well, do you think the train is seriously damaged?"

Mertens cowered at Schmidt. "Excusez-moi."

Schmidt pushed past him, with Milos stopping him.

* * *

Anarchists were struggling to building bombs. They were working in sweats churning around them as it flowed into the factories, hot and swirling with grease from the machinery. The head of the factory came partway down the ladder and shouted.

"Вот и все, ребята. Получите ад! (That's it, lads. Get the hell up!)"

They scrambled through the escape ladders and doors.

The cook, now joined by another waiter, leaned on the window watching his aide playing soccer with chunks of ice used for glasses.

"Je suppose que ce n'est rien de grave. Je vais retourner dans ma cabine à lire. (I guess it's nothing serious. I'm going back to my cabin to read.)"

Another waiter popped through the door, wearing a topcoat over pajamas.

"Dites, je ne manquez pas le plaisir? (Say, did I miss the fun?)"

Charlie and Heather came from the restaurant car, which were right next to the three men. They stared as the couple went out to the curtain.

A moment later in England, Captain Brown rounded the corner, followed by Trenchard and Carpenter Hutchinson. They had come down from the bridge by the outside stairs. The three men, their faces grim, brushed right past one of the pilots. Trenchard barely glanced at him.

"Can you convince them?"

"Not unless the mobilization gets ahead."

The inspection party went down the stairs to the war office.

* * *

Heather spoke to Charlie in a low voice. "It's bad."

"We have to tell Sally and Lucy."

"Now it's worse."

"Come with me, Heather. I jump, you jump...right?"

"Right."

Heather followed Charlie through the door inside the sleeping car.

Heather and Charlie crossed the in-between platform, entering the corridor. Schroeder was waiting for them in the hall as they approached the room.

"We've been looking for you, sir."

Schroeder followed and, unseen, moved close behind Heather and smoothly slipped the whistle into the pocket of her overcoat.

Lucy and Sally waited in Anna Wolff's compartment F, along with Trainmaster Verges, Conductor Coudert and Fraulein Wolff herself. There was silence as Charlie and Heather entered. Sally closed her robe at her throat when she saw Heather.

Charlie spoke. "Something serious has happened."

Lucy smirked at him and responded. "That's right. Two things dear to me have disappeared this evening. Now that one is back..." She looked from Charlie to Heather. "...I have a pretty good idea where to find the other. Search her."

The chef-de-train stepped up to Heather.

"Coat off, mademoiselle."

Schroeder pulled at Heather's coat and Heather shook her head in dismay, shrugging out of it. Trainmaster Verges patted her down.

"This is horseshit," Heather said in dismay.

Charlie turned to Lucy. "Lucy, you can't be serious! We're in the middle of a hijacking, and you—"

Jacques Coudert pulled the scarab whistle out of the pocket of Heather's coat.

"Is this it?"

Charlie was stunned. Needless to say, so was Heather.

"That's it." Lucy took the whistle.

The Chef-de-Train looked at the scarab whistle. "Right then. Now don't make a fuss."

He started to handcuff Heather.

"Don't you believe it, Charlie. Don't."

Charlie looked up, uncertain. "She couldn't have."

"Of course she could. Easy enough for a professional. She memorized the combination when you opened the safe."

Charlie remembered standing at the safe, looking in the mirror and meeting Heather's eyes as she stood behind him, watching.

"But I was with her the whole time."

Lucy spoke just to him, low and cold. "Maybe she did it while you were closing the egg."

"They put it in my pocket!" Heather was still protesting her innocence.

Schroeder held Heather's coat. "It's not even your pocket, miss." He read the tag. "Property of Claude Boutarel."

Schroeder showed the coat to the Chef-de-Train and Mr. Boutarel who came to see what all the fuss was. There was a label inside the collar with the owner's name.

"That was reported stolen today."

"I was going to return it! Charlie—"

Charlie felt utterly betrayed, hurt, and confused. He shrunk away from her. She started shouting to him as Schroeder and the trainmaster dragged her out into the hall. He couldn't look her in the eye.

"Charlie, don't listen to them...I didn't do this! You know I didn't! You know it!"

He was devastated. His sister laid a comforting hand on her shoulder as the tears welled up.

"Why do women believe men?"

* * *

Brown and Trenchard came down the steps to the Mail Room and found the clerks scrambling to pull mail from the racks. They were furiously hauling the blackmailing jury duties and ultimatums of mail up from the hold below.

Hugh Trenchard climbed partway down the stairs to the hold, which was almost full. Sacks of mail containing threatening messages were everywhere. The lights were still on below the darkness, casting an eerie glow. A submarine was visible under the water, the brass glinting cheerfully. Trenchard looked down as the water covered his shoe, and scrambled back up the stairs.

Trenchard unrolled a big drawing of the map across the chartroom table. It was a side elevation, showing all the flanks. His hands were shaking. H. H. Asquith and David Lloyd George hovered behind Trenchard and the Captain.

"When can we overlook this, do you think?" George asked impatiently.

Brown glared at him and turned his attention to Trenchard's drawing. The viscount pointed to it for emphasis as he talked.

"Russia mobilizing troops within ten minutes and in Germany, the Kaiser waits to cooperate with the ultimanium."

"That's right," Brown agreed.

"Five countries. We can stay in peace with the first four demands breached. But not five. Not five. As they go down in Hungary, the troops will spill their weapons over the enemies...at Budapest...from one city to the next...back and back. There's no stopping it."

"The transactions—" Captain Brown was grasping for any hope.

"The transactions buy you time...but minutes only. From this moment, no matter what we do; we will go into a violent bloodshed."

"But we can't go to war!" The Earl of Dwyfor was flabbergasted.

"It is due to the assassination, sir. I assure you, it can. And it will. It is a mathematical certainty." The Viscount already knew the truth.

Brown looked like he had been gut punched.

"How much time?"

"An hour, two at most," Trenchard replied.

George reeled as his dream turned into his worst nightmare.

"And how many men, sir. Viscount?" Brown asked.

"Two thousand, two hundred souls for the action, sir."

There was a pause. Brown turned to face a beagle and a canary.

"I believe there's hope for you yet, Flying Ace Snoopy."

General Paul Von Hindenburg was striding along the hangars, as airmen and officers scurried to uncover the planes. Steam was venting from pipes on the funnels from the ammunition factories overhead, and the din was horrendous. Speech was difficult, adding to the crew's level of disorganization. Hindenburg saw one man named Richthofen fumbling with the mechanism of one of the Fokker triplanes and yelled to him over the roar of steam.

"Schalten Sie diese Heckflügel auf der rechten Seite! Starten Sie die Motoren vor dem Einchecken. Haben Sie noch nie einen Bohrer? (Turn those tail wings to the right! Start the engines before you check. Have you never had a drill?)"

" Nein, Sir! Nicht mit diesen neuen Flugzeugen, Sir. (No, sir! Not with these new aeroplanes, sir.)"

He looked around, disgusted, as the crew fumbled with the munitions, and the tackle for the falls...the devices which were used to start the tanks. A few men were coming out on the field, hesitant in the noise and bitter cold.


	7. The Escape

July 26, 1914

From inside the compartment of Anna Wolff, they could hear knocking and voices in the corridor.

"We'd had better go dress." Sally and Anna exited and Lucy went to Charlie. She regarded him coldly for a moment, then slapped him across the face.

"It is a little slut, isn't it?"

To Charlie, the blow was inconsequential compared to the blow his heart had been given. Lucy grabbed his shoulders roughly. "Look at me, you little—"

There was a loud knock on the door and an urgent voice. The door opened and Jacques Condert put his head in. "Mademoiselle, I've been told to ask you to please come to the dining car."

"Get out. We're busy."

The conductor persisted, coming in to get the top coat and hat from the top of a dresser. "I'm sorry about the inconvenience, Mrs. Van Pelt, but it's the bandit's orders. Please dress warmly. It's quite cold tonight." He handed a glass of cognac to Charlie. "Not to worry, petit. I'm sure it's just a precaution."

"This is ridiculous." Lucy didn't believe there was any reason for the interruption.

In the corridor outside, the conductors were being so polite and obsequious that they were conveying no sense of danger whatsoever.

However, it was another story in the Nord Express.

* * *

Blackness. Then the door was thrown open with a bang and the light snapped on by a conductor. The Cartmell family roused from a sound sleep.

"Everybody up. Let's go. We are terminating at Bucharest."

In the corridor outside, another conductor was going from door to door along the hall, pounding and yelling. "Bucharest station. Bucharest station. Everybody up, come on. Bucharest station..."

People came out of the doors behind the conductor, perplexed. In the foreground a Syrian woman asked her husband what was said. He shrugged.

In the RAF aerodrome, Tabor looked shocked. "CQD, sir?"

"That's right. The warning. CQD. Tell whoever responds that we are going to war with Germany and need immediate assistance." Brown hurried out.

"Blimey." Tabor was still in shock.

"Maybe you ought to try that new distress warning...SOS." Major Musgrave grinned. "They just classified that one a few months ago."

Tabor laughed in spite of himself and started sending SOS. Dit, dit, dit, da, da, da, dit, dit, dit...over and over.

* * *

General Paul von Hindenburg looked around in amazement. The field was empty except for a few of the army men fumbling with the planes. He yelled over the roar of the steam to Kaiser Wilhelm II. "Wo sind die Soldaten? (Where are the troops?)"

"Sie haben alle wieder hinein gegangen. Es ist ziemlich kalt und laut für sie. (They've all gone back inside. It's rather cold and noisy for them.)"

Hindenburg felt like he was in a bad dream. He looked at his pocket watch and headed for the hangar entrance.

* * *

All 30 passengers had gathered outside their compartments. They were getting indignant about the confusion. Peppermint Patty snagged a passing Claude Boutarel.

"What's doing, sonny? You've got us all trussed up and now we're cooling our heels."

The Frenchman and his wife and son backed away, actually stumbling on the stairs. "Sorry, mademoiselle. Let me go and find out."

Salko and Vesna came on their employer's orders, to allay panic.

Van Pelt's entourage came up to the red sleeping car. Lucy was carrying a necklace, almost as an afterthought. Charlie was like a sleepwalker.

"It's just the Goddamned English doing everything by the book." Lucy still didn't believe there was a real threat.

"There's no need for language, Ms. van Pelt." Sally turned to Linus. "Go back and turn the heater on in my room, so it won't be too cold when we get back."

Robert Cath entered, looking around the magnificent room, which he knew was doomed. Charlie, standing nearby, saw his heartbroken expression. He walked over to him, and Lucy went after him.

"I saw the hijacking, Mr. Cath. And I see it in your eyes. Please tell me the truth." He looked up at him.

"Germany and Austria want war."

"You're certain?"

"Yes. In an hour or so...all this...will be destroyed."

"My God." Now it was Lucy's turn to look stunned. Europe? At war?

"Please tell only who you must. I don't want to be responsible for a panic. And get to in there quickly. Don't wait. You remember what I told you about the guns?" Cath felt sick inside, knowing how many were going to die.

"Yes, I understand. Thank you." Charlie nodded. He had known that the train had been hijacked by Serbian nationalists, but the news still stunned him. The world was truly at war.

Cath went off, moving among the passengers and urging himself to stay behind.

Schroeder and Trainmaster Verges were handcuffing Heather to a four-inch water pipe in the hold of the rear baggage car as Conductor Mertens rushed in anxiously with Ivo and almost blurted to the Trainmaster, "Vous êtes recherché par les bandits, mon oncle. D'urgence. (You're wanted by the bandits, uncle. Urgently.)"

"Go on. Ivo and I will keep an eye on him." Schroeder pulled a pearl handled Colt .45 automatic from under his coat. The Chef-de-Train nodded and tossed the handcuff key to Schroeder, then exited with Mertens. Schroeder flipped the key in the air and caught it.

* * *

Kaiser Wilhelm II was relaying a message to General Hindenburg from a ship in the Imperial German Navy. "HMS _Dreadnought_, sagt sie machen siebzehn Knoten, volle Kraft für sie, allgemein. (HMS _Dreadnought_ says they're making seventeen knots, full steam for them, general.)"

"Und wird sie tragen keine Truppen? (And is she carrying any troops?)"

"Der einzige, der in der Nähe genügend zusätzliche Männern, allgemein. Sie sagt, sie kann die Verstärkungen in vier Stunden zu bringen. (The only one close to having enough extra men, general. She says they can bring the reinforcements in four hours.)"

" Vier Stunden! (Four hours!)" The enormity of it hit Hindenburg like a sledgehammer blow. "Danke, Kaiser. (Thank you, Kaiser.)"

He turned as Richthofen exited, and looked out onto the blackness.

He whispered to himself. "Red Baron."

* * *

Roy Brown had his Sopwith planes swung out. He was standing amidst a crowd of uncertain men, teenage boys and women in all states of dress and undress, waiting to see them off. One man was barefoot. Others were in stockings. The maitre d' of the local restaurant was in top hat and overcoat. Others were still in evening dress, while some were in bathrobes and kimonos. Women were wearing coats over velvet gowns, then topping it with sable stoles. Some brought jewels, others books, even small dogs.

Brown saw Snoopy walking stiffly toward him and quickly went to him. He yelled into the beagle's ear, through cupped hands, over the roar of the steam. "Hadn't we better get the men into the planes, sir?"

Snoopy just nodded, a bit absently. The fire had gone out of him. He saw the awful truth in Brown's face.

Brown shouted to the men. "Right! Start the loading. Men and boys!"

The appalling din of escaping steam abruptly cut off, leaving a sudden unearthly silence in which Brown's voice echoed.

A man raised his violin to play. "Number twenty-six. Ready and—"

The band had reassembled just outside the aerodrome, port side, near where Brown was calling for the planes to be loaded. They struck up a waltz, lively and elegant. The music wafted all over the base.

Brown indicated the plane. "Sir, this way."

No one moved. A couple of young men and boys looked up at the breaking dawn. It was a long way to the sky. With the noise cut off, and the music playing, the ground seemed very safe and sound. Like a big rock in the middle of the ocean.

"Sir, please. Step into the plane."

Finally, one man stepped across the gap, into the plane, terrified of leaving his girlfriend.

"You watch. They'll put us off in these silly little things to freeze, and we'll all be back home by breakfast," said a teen boy in the crowd.

* * *

On the train, Lucy, Charlie, and Sally came out of the doors near the sleeping car.

"My brooch. I left my brooch. I must have it!" Sally turned back to go to her compartment, but Lucy took her by the arm, refusing to let her go. The firmness of her hold surprised her.

"Stay here, Sally."

Sally saw her expression, and knew fear for the first time.

It was chaos in Bucharest, with passengers pushing their way through narrow corridors clogged with people carrying suitcases, duffel bags, children. Some had hats on, others didn't.

One conductor spoke to another. "I told the stupid sods no luggage. Aw, bloody hell!"

He threw up his hands at the sight of a family, loaded down with cases and bags, completely blocking the corridor.

Franklin and Shermy pushed past the conductors, going the other way. They reached a huge crowd gathered at the terminal. Franklin spotted Janice with the rest of the Dahl family, standing patiently with suitcases in hand. He reached her and she grinned, hugging him.

Shermy pushed to where he could see what was holding up the group. There was a steel gate across the station entrance, with several Serbian soldiers on the other side.

"Stay calm, please. It's not time to leave yet." The army men stood before the gate, refusing to unlock it.

Near Shermy, an Irishwoman stood stoically with two small children and their battered luggage.

"What are we doing, mummy?" one of the children asked.

"We're just waiting, dear. When they finish searching for any German passengers, they'll be starting in us, and we'll want to be all ready, won't we?"

* * *

The Sopwith Camel was less than half full, with twenty-eight inch wingspan and a fifty-six wide tail.

"Take off! Wings left and right together, steady lads!" Woodstock's friend Conrad shouted.

The Sopwith Camel lurched as the wires started to pay out through the pulley blocks. The pilot gasped. The plane ascended, swaying and jerking, toward the sky sixty feet above. The men below were terrified.

The rows of portholes in German submarines were angling down into the water. Under the surface, they glowed green. The Orient Express happened to pass by one. Inside was Heather, looking apprehensively at the U-boat rising up from the nearest river.

Inside the rear baggage car, Heather sat chained to the water pipe, next to the porthole. Schroeder sat on the edge of a desk. He put a .45 bullet on the desk and watched it roll across and fall off. He picked up the bullet.

"You know...I do believe this world may go to war." He walked over to Heather. "I've been asked to give you this small token of our appreciation..." He punched Heather hard in the stomach, replaced the handcuffs with strong and tight ropes and gagged her with a sash, knocking the wind out of her. "Compliments of Ms. Lucille van Pelt."

Schroeder flipped the handcuff key in the air, caught it, and put it in his pocket. He exited. Heather was left gasping, bound with ropes and gagged to the pipe.

At a training ground for the Serbian Army, two men lit a rocket. It shot into the sky and exploded with a thunderclap over the train, sending out white starbursts, which lit up the entire restaurant car as they fell.

Schmidt, the Managing Director of Schmidt Steel Works, was cracking. Already at the breaking point from his immense guilt, the rocket panicked him. He started shouting at the Serbs struggling with the rest of the passengers.

"There is no time to waste! Get in here!" Milos yelled, and waved his arms. "In! In! In!"

Alexei Dolnikov looked up from the door at the madman. "Get out of the way, you fool!"

"Do you know who I am?"

Milos, not having a clue nor caring, squared up to Schmidt and Alexei. "You're passengers. And I'm a freedom fighter. Now do what you're told!" He turned away. "Steady, men! Stand by for the rest!"

Schmidt spoke numbly, backing away. "Yes, quite right. Sorry."

Milos was loading the passengers in the area nearest Lucy and Charlie...the restaurant car. "Get in here! You too miss."

Another rocket burst overhead, lighting the crowd. Startled faces turned upward, fear now in the eyes.

Auguste and Louis Lumière had their Biograph camera set up, cranking away...hoping to get an exposure off the street lights. He had a woman posed in front of the scene at the troops in France rounding up for battle. "You're afraid, darling. Scared to death. That's it!"

Either she suddenly learned to act, or she was petrified.

* * *

Charlie watched the farewells taking place right in front of him as they stepped closer to the restaurant car. They were all worried and frightened if they were to be separated.

Nearby, Peppermint Patty was getting a reluctant Sophie and Rebecca to enter the restaurant car. "Come on, you heard the man. Get in the dining car, Soph."

"Will we be seated according to class?" Sally asked. "I hope it's not too crowded—"

"Oh, Sally, shut up!" Sally froze, mouth open, as Charlie grabbed her shoulders. "Don't you understand? Those bandits are Serbian terrorists and there are enough guns...to start a war. Once we're in Serbia, we are going to die."

"Not the better half." Lucy looked at Charlie patronizingly. "You know, it's a pity I didn't keep that drawing. It'll be worth a lot more by morning."

It hit him like a thunderbolt. Heather was third class. She didn't stand a chance. Another rocket burst overhead, bathing his face in white light.

"You unimaginable bastard." He stared at Lucy as though seeing her for the first time.

"Come on, Sally, get in here. These are the first class seats right up here. That's it." Peppermint Patty practically handed her over to Vesna, then looked around for some other person who might need a push. "Come on, Chuck. You're next, darling."

Charlie stepped back, shaking his head.

"Big Brother, get in here!" Sally commanded him.

Charlie looked at her, then walked away. "Good-bye, Sally."

Sally, standing in the tippy restaurant car, could do nothing. Lucy grabbed Charlie's arm, but he pulled free and walked away through the crowd. Lucy caught up to Charlie and grabbed him again, roughly.

"Where are you going? To her? Is that it? To be a gutter rat to that whore?"

"I'd rather be her gutter rat than your husband."

He clenched his jaw and squeezed her arm viciously, pulling him back toward the smoking salon. Charlie spat in her face. She let go with a curse, and he ran into the crowd.

"That's all!" Milos shouted.

"Big Brother! Big Brother!" Sally still called after him.

"Stuff a sock in it, would you, Sally? He'll be along," Peppermint Patty told Sally.

The car lurched downward as all the passengers came in.

Charlie ran breathlessly up to Salko carrying a crowbar. "Could I borrow this?"

Appalled, he turned to see Lucy running toward them. Charlie ran on as Salko grabbed Lucy, restraining her. He ran to the platform between the restaurant car and the red sleeping car and with all his strength, unhooked the cars.

Lucy broke free and ran after him. She reached the platform, but was hit by the crowbar flown back at her. The cars slowly pulled apart. She scanned the door. Charlie was gone.

* * *

The Orient Express, now a mini train, loomed closer to the Serbian border like a cliff. Its enormous mass was suddenly threatening to those who would fall onto the track. Milos, gun in hand, wanted nothing but to get the train to Belgrade and deliver the arms. Unfortunately, the passengers couldn't stand it. They flailed like a duck with a broken wing.

"Keep quiet...until Belgrade."

"Ain't you boys ever rowed in a boat before? Here, pretend you're giving me oars. I'll show you how it's done." Peppermint Patty climbed over Sally to gesture the rowing part, stepping on her feet.

Around them, the war was in full swing, with some PT boats in the water and others being loaded with ammunition.

Heather pulled on the pipe with all her strength. It wasn't budging. She felt something. The runaway cars had coast to a stop.

"Huh?!" She tried to pull one hand out of the rope, working it until the skin was raw...no good.

"Help! Somebody! Can anybody hear me?" She whispered to herself. "This could be bad."

The corridor outside was deserted, the cold air sweeping in. Heather's voice came faintly through the door, but there was no one to hear it.

Robert Cath was opening doors, checking that people were out. "Anyone in here?"

Charlie ran up to him, breathless. "Mr. Cath! Thank God! Did you see where the Trainmaster took Heather to?"

"What? Did you unhook the cars?"

"Sort of. I'll do this with or without your help, sir. But without will take longer."

Cath paused, thinking. "I think I saw them take her into the rear baggage car, then go into it and look left."

"Baggage car, left, right. I have it."

"Hurry, Charlie."

Charlie ran up as the last sleeping car was closing in.

Without thinking, he grabbed his own head out of frustration and thought. "I'm through being polite, God dammit! I may never be polite the rest of my life! Now take me down!"

He fumbled to get into the car.

* * *

Peppermint Patty and the two of the passengers were making rowing gestures to entertain themselves, and they'd imagine going about a hundred feet or so. Enough to see that the train was angled down into a tunnel, with the locomotive less than ten feet under the ground.

"Come on, girls, join in. It'll keep you warm. Let's go, Sally. Pretend you're grabbing an oar!" Peppermint Patty called to the other occupants of the dining car encouragingly.

Sally just stared at the spectacle of the former luxury train, its rows of lights blazing, slanting down into the sullen black earth of the Serbian barrier.

* * *

Through the platform of the green sleeping coach, Charlie could see the door to the rear baggage car. He turned and looked around.

"Left, the old passage."

He spotted it and slogged down the corridor. The place was understandably deserted. He was on his own.

"Right, right...right."

He turned into a cross-corridor, running down the hall. There were two doors in different directions.

"Heather? Heather!"

Heather was hopelessly pulling on the pipe again, straining until she turned red. She collapsed back on the bench, realizing she was screwed. Then she heard him through the door.

"Charlie! In here!"

In the hall, Charlie heard her voice behind his. He spun and ran back, locating the right door, then pushed it open.

He ran over to Heather, took the sash off and put his arms around her. "Heather, Heather, Heather...I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

They were so happy to see each other it was embarrassing.

"That guy Schroeder put it in my pocket."

"I know, I know."

"See if you can find a way to untie these. Or better yet, try those drawers. Look for a knife."

He kissed her face and hugged her again, then started to go through the desk.

"So...how did you find out I didn't do it?"

"I didn't." He looked at her. "I just realized I already knew."

They shared a look, and then he went back to ransacking the hold, searching trunks and crates. Heather saw movement out the window and looked out. A plane hit the surface of a nearby river, seen from below.

* * *

While the passengers waited in the restaurant car, the former Orient Express rocked away to make a quick stop. Tatiana and her grandfather sat in the only table that was still up.

"I despise this situation. I just know I'm going to be sick. I always get sick at violence. Good heavens, there's a man down there."

From behind the window she saw a tough man looking up at her...a face in a shade of light under the ground.

* * *

Charlie stopped trashing the room, and stood there, breathing hard. "There's no knife in here."

They looked around. Heather had pulled her feet up onto the bench.

"You have to go for help."

Charlie nodded. "I'll be right back."

"I'll wait here!" Heather called after him, stating the obvious.

Charlie ran out, looking back at him once from the doorway, then ran away. Heather looked down at the slowing wheels.

Charlie ran down the hall to the other side of the baggage car. He entered the door, his long coat caught in the doornail. The weight of it was really dragging him. He ripped at the buttons and shimmied quickly out of the thing. He bounded up through the office, to find himself in an empty coach...part of the labyrinth of hallways forward. He was alone there. A long groan of stressed metal echoed along the hall as the detached cars continued to slow down. He ran down the hall, unimpeded now.

"Hello? Somebody!"

He turned a corner and ran along the other corridor in a daze. He thought he had seen a young man appear, running through water, sending up geysers of spray. He pelted past him without slowing, his eyes crazed. But it turned out to be a mirage.

"Help me! We need help!"

He didn't look back. It was like a bad dream. The war machines outside gonged with terrifying sounds.

The lights flickered and went out, leaving utter darkness. A moment passed. Then they came back on. He found himself hyperventilating. That one moment of blackness was the most terrifying of her life.

Ivo ran around the nearest corner, his arms full of fists. He was upset to see someone in his section. He grabbed him forcefully by the arm, pulling him with the thought of a fist fight like a wayward child. "Хајде, онда. Хајде да те назад, клинац. То је у реду. (Come on, then. Let's get you back, kid. That's right.)"

"Wait. Wait! I need your help! There's—"

"Нема потребе за паником, клинац. Хајде и бори се као човек! (No need for panic, kid. Come on and fight like a man!)"

"No, let me go! You're going the wrong way!" He wasn't listening. And he wouldn't let him go. He shouted in his ear, and when he was about to deliver an uppercut, he punched him squarely in the nose.

Shocked, he let him go, and staggered back. "У пакао са тобом! (To hell with you!)"

"See you there, buster!"

Ivo fell unconscious, holding his bloody nose. He spat at him, just the way Heather had taught him.

He turned around, seeing the left pocket of Ivo's jacket had Vesna's knife in it. He removed the jacket, and seized the knife, running back the way he came.

At the hallway he looked down and gasped. The detached coaches had finally come to a stop. He went down and had to crouch to look along the corridor to the room where Heather was trapped.

Charlie plunged into the refrigerated air, which was up to his waist...and powered forward, holding the knife above his round head in two hands. He grimaced at the pain from the literally freezing temperature.

Heather had climbed up on the bench, and was hugging the water pipe. Charlie waded in, holding the knife above his head.

"Will this work?"

"We'll find out."

They were both terrified, but trying to keep panic at bay. She positioned the knot connecting the two ropes, stretching it taut across the steel pipe. The rope was, of course, very short, and her exposed wrists were on either side of it.

"Try a couple practice swings." Charlie hefted the knife and plunged it into a wooden cabinet. "Now try to hit the same mark again." He swung hard, and the dagger plunged in four inches from the mark. "Okay, that's enough practice."

She winced, bracing herself as he raised the knife. He had to hit a target about an inch wide with all the force he could muster, with her hands on either side.

Heather spoke to him, trying to sound calm. "You can do it, Charlie. Hit it as hard as you can. I trust you." Heather closed her eyes. So did he.

The knife came down. Charlie gingerly opened his eyes and looked...Heather was grinning with the ropes out of her hands.

Charlie dropped the knife, all the strength going out of him.

"Nice work, there, Paul Bunyan." She climbed up next to him. She couldn't breathe for a second when they got outside. "Merde! Excuse my French. Ow, ow, ow, that is cold weather! Come on, let's go."

They waded outside. Charlie started toward the direction of the sleeping cars, but Heather stopped him. There was only about a foot of tracks visible by the light of the moon.

"Too dark. We gotta find another way back."


	8. Unable to Leave, Unwilling to Stay

The mini Orient Express was two feet from the Serbian border. Once fifty feet above the boundary line, they now were quietly slipping into the country. The passengers saw it, teak and gold on black water, rippling and dimming to a pale green as they went further.

In the restaurant coach, Sally looked back at the scenery of the once grand Orient Express, transfixed by the sight of the dying world. The locomotive was now barely above the borderline. Another of the Serbian Army's rockets exploded overhead. It lit up the whole area, revealing the half a dozen trees surrounding the train.

"Now there's something you don't see every day." Peppermint Patty shook her head, staring at the spectacle.

* * *

Bucharest was the widest city in the country of Romania. It was used by crew and army men alike, and ran almost the length of the country. Right then soldiers moved along it like refugees, heading to the warfronts.

With a crash, a wooden doorframe splintered and a gate burst open under the force of Heather's driving. Heather and Charlie stumbled through into the street via motorcycle. A soldier, who was nearby herding people along, marched over. "Aici te! Va trebui să plătiți pentru asta, știi. Asta e Român de proprietate- (Here you! You'll have to pay for that, you know. That's Romanian property—)"

Heather and Charlie turned together. "Shut up!"

Heather led her past the dumbfounded soldier. They joined the lower class stragglers going south. In places the street was almost completely blocked by large families carrying all their luggage.

A Romanian woman gave Charlie a blanket, more for modesty than because he was blue-lipped and shivering. "Aici, băiete, te acoperi. (Here, lad, cover yourself.)"

Heather rubbed his arms and tried to warm him up as they walked along. The woman's husband offered them a flask of whiskey. "Acest lucru va lua dezmorți. (This'll take the chill off.)"

Charlie took a mighty belt and handed it to Heather. She grinned and followed suit. Heather tried a number of doors and iron gates along the way, finding them all locked.

* * *

On the German field, the action had moved to the aft group of Schütte-Lanz zeppelins, numbers 9, 11, 13, and 15 on the right side, and 10, 12, 14, and 16 on the left side. The pace of work was more frantic. Pilots were running now to work the propellers, their previous complacency gone.

On the train, Lucy pushed through the crowd, scanning for Charlie. Around her was chaos and confusion. Madame Boutarel was making sure François was still in the crowd. Her husband was shouting over people's heads. She took hold of Milos' arm as he was about to turn away.

"Allez-vous attendre un instant? Je dois courir vers mon compartiment pour quelque chose- (Will you wait a moment? I just have to run back to my compartment for something—)"

Milos grabbed her and shoved her bodily back on to the floor. Tyler Whitney rushed up to him just then. "Why are the men going in half groups?"

Milos stepped past him, helping Salko clear a snarled glass. "Not now, Tyler."

Whitney pointed down at the nearby water. "There, look...twenty or so in a PT boat built for sixty-five. And I saw one PT boat with only twelve. Twelve!"

"Well...I was not sure of the weight—"

"Rubbish! They were tested in Nish with the weight of seventy men. Now be ready to fill the guns with bullets, Milos. For God's sake, man!"

Lucy saw Schroeder hurrying toward her from the corridor which once connected the dining and sleeping cars of the train.

"He's still not back," Schroeder reported.

"We're running out of time. And this strutting Serbian..." Lucy indicated Milos. "...isn't letting any of us go."

"The two other Serbs patrolling this car have not been seen."

"Then that's our play. But we're still going to need some insurance." She started off forward. "Come on."

Lucy charged off, heading forward, followed by Schroeder. Nearby stood Tatiana and the Count.

"Пожалуйста, Татьяна, спасти себя, я стар, и я прожил свою жизнь. (Please, Tatiana, save yourself, I am old and I have lived my life.)"

"Нет, мы вместе уже десять лет, и куда вы идете, я иду. Не спорь со мной, дедушка. Вы знаете, это не хорошо. (No. We've been together for ten years, and where you go, I go. Don't argue with me, grandfather. You know it does no good.)"

He looked at her with sadness and great love. They embraced gently.

"Carry on!" Milos called.

At the bow of the HMS _Irresistible_, Snoopy strode to the bridge rail and looked down at the well deck. Water was shipping over the sides of a nearby submarine and the well deck was full of troops. Two men ran across the deck, their feet sending up noises. Behind Snoopy, A man fired a rocket.

* * *

Franklin, standing with Janice Emmons and her family, heard Heather's voice.

"Franklin! Frank!"

Franklin turned and saw Heather and Charlie pushing through the crowd. He and Heather hugged like siblings.

"The Germans are all going crazy," Franklin told her.

"We gotta get out there or we're gonna be riddled with bullets. Where's Shermy?"

Franklin pointed over the heads of the solidly packed crowd to the gates.

Shermy had his hands on the bars of the steel gate, which blocked the head of the outlands. The Austrians opened the gate a foot or so and a few women were squeezing through.

"Nur Frauen. Keine Männer. Keine Männer! (Women only. No men. No men!)"

But some terrified men, not understanding German, tried to rush through the gap, forcing the gate open. The Viennese Austrians pushed them back, shoving and punching them.

"Holen Sie sich zurück! Holen Sie sich zurück, ihr alle! (Get back! Get back, all of you!)" The major spoke to the trooper. "Verriegeln! (Lock it!)"

They struggled to get the gate closed again, while the trooper brandished a small revolver. Another held a fire ax. They locked the gate, and a cry went up among the crowd, who surged forward, pounding against the steel and shouting in English and Romanian.

"For the love of God, man, there are children here! Let us out, so we can have a chance!"

But the troopers were scared now. They had let the situation get out of hand, and now they had a mob. Shermy gave up and pushed his way back through the crowd, going down the street. He rejoined Heather, Charlie, and Franklin. "It's hopeless that way."

"Well, whatever we're going to do, we better do it fast." Heather was trying to think of some solution.

Franklin turned to Janice, praying he could make himself understood. He spoke with a lot of hand gestures. "Everyone...all of you...come with me now. We go to trains. We go to trains. Capito? Come now!"

They couldn't understand what he was saying. They could see his urgency, but Hennessey Emmons, the patriarch of the family, shook his head. He would not panic, and would not let his family go with this boy. Franklin turned to Janice.

"Janice...per favore...please...come with me, I am lucky. Is my destiny to go to Constantinople."

She kissed him, then stepped back to be with her family. Heather laid a hand on his shoulder, her eyes saying, "Let's go."

"I will never forget you."

He turned to Heather, who led the way out of the crowd. Looking back, Franklin saw her face disappear into the crowd.

* * *

Lucy and Schroeder eventually found the detached sleeping cars and went into compartment I to see that the wooden box was still there. Lucy opened the box and reached inside. As Schroeder watched, she pulled out two stacks of bills, still banded by bank wrappers. Then she took out the Firebird and the scarab whistle, putting it in the pocket of her overcoat, and locked the box.

Lucy held up the stacks of bills. "I make my own luck."

Schroeder patted the .45 in his waistband. "So do I."

Lucy grinned, putting the money in her handbag as they went out.

* * *

Heather, Charlie, Franklin, and Shermy were lost, searching for a way out of town. They pushed past confused civilians...past a mother changing her baby's diaper on top of an upturned steamer trunk...past a woman arguing heatedly with a man in Serbo-Croatian, a wailing child next to them...past a man kneeling to console a woman who was just sitting on the floor, sobbing...and past another man with an English/Arabic dictionary, trying to figure out what the signs meant, while his wife and children waited patiently.

Heather and the others came upon a narrow alley, and they went up two streets before a small group pressed up against a blockade of Germans stopped them. The men were yelling at a scared gunman.

"Zum Rathaus, mit allen anderen. Es wird alles da draußen bekommen sortiert. (Go to the town hall, with everyone else. It'll all get sorted out there.)"

Heather took one look at this scene and finally just lost it. "God damn it to hell son of a bitch!"

He grabbed one end of a bench bolted to the ground on the landing. She started pulling on it, and Shermy and Franklin pitched in until the bolts sheared and it broke free. Charlie figured out what they were doing and cleared a path up the stairs between the waiting people.

"Move aside! Quickly, move aside!"

Heather and Shermy ran up the steps with the bench and rammed it into the gate with all their strength. It ripped loose from its track and fell outward, narrowly missing the German. Led by Heather, the crowd surged through. Charlie stepped up to the cowering German and said, in his most imperious tone, "If you have any intention of keeping your pathetic job with the Austrian Emperor, I suggest you escort these good people to the outskirts...now."

Class won out. He nodded dumbly and motioned for them to follow.

* * *

Sally pretended to row with Peppermint Patty, Rebecca, Sophie, and the incompetent August Schmidt. She rested on her make believe oars, exhausted, and looked back at the scenery.

The locomotive was stopped to take on fuel, still ablaze with light. Nothing was above forward of the border crossing except for the signal box. Another rocket went off, lighting up the entire area...there were a dozen trees moving surrounding from the train.

At the border gate, Marshall Putnik was shouting to the mini train through a large metal megaphone. "Врати се! Нека нам таблу! (Come back! Let us board!)"

General Georgevitch joined him, blowing his silver whistle.

From the train, the whistle came shrilly across the water. Milos gripped the rifle in fear. "The Germans will stop us right down if we don't keep going."

"We got room for lots more. I say we go back."

"No! It's our lives now, not his. And I'm in charge of this train! Now shut up!"

Marshall Putnik, at the rail of the patrol boat, lowered his megaphone slowly. "Будале. (The fools.)"

As Lucy and Schroeder got back to the train, they encountered George Abbot, both dressed in white tie, tailcoat, and top hat.

"George, what's the occasion?"

"We have dressed in our best and are prepared to fight for this war like gentlemen."

"That's admirable, George." Lucy walked on. "I'll be sure and tell your company...when I get to Constantinople."

There were still two card games in progress. The smoking car was quiet and civilized. A silver serving cart, holding a large humidor, began to roll slowly across the room. August took a cigar from it as it rolled by.

"It seems we've been dealt a bad hand this time."

Lucy and Schroeder were walking back to the dining room with a purposeful stride. They passed the chef and his apprentice who were working up a sweat tossing bottles over the window into the border crossing. After they went by, the apprentice took a break and pulled a bottle of scotch from a pocket, upending it. He drained it, and tossed it over the side, too, then stood there, a little unsteadily.

Panic was setting in around the remaining countries. The crowd there was now a mix of all three classes and gender. Officers repeatedly warned men back from escaping. The crowd pressed in closer.

Lothar von Richthofen brandished the wingspan of a Fokker to discourage a close press of men who looked ready to rush the attack. Several Serbian men broke ranks and rushed forward.

Lothar pulled out a revolver and aimed it at them. "Holen Sie sich zurück, Serbisch Müll! (Get back, Serbian trash!)"

The men backed down. Ernst Udet, up, yelled to the ground crew. "Flügel links und rechts! (Wings left and right!)"

Lothar's brother Manfred turned away from the crowd and, out of their sight, broke his pistol open. Letting out a long breath, he started to load it.

Lucy and Schroeder arrived in time to see Whitney ordering his last gun.

"We're too late."

"There is still some time before Belgrade. Stay with this one...Whitney. He seems to be quite...practical."

In the sea of Dardanelles, there was another panic. The French battleship _Bouvet_, already in the water but still attached to its mooring ropes, was pushed aft by the discharge water being pumped by the tide It wound up directly next to another battleship, _Masséna_, which was coming down right on top of it on the port side.

The troops shouted in panic to the crew on the starboard to stop crowding. They were ignored. Some men put their hands up, trying futilely to keep the five hundred tons of _Masséna_ from crushing them.

John de Robeck, the captain, got out to the steering wheel and leapt to the falls, climbing rudely over people. He moved the rudder port aft while another crewman cut the engines. _Bouvet_ drifted out from alongside _Masséna_ just seconds before it touched the hull with a slap.

Lucy, looking down from the window, heard gunshots.

Ernst Udet, in a truck wagon, was firing his gun as a warning to a bunch of Serbian men threatening to attack as it passed the open streets of Frankfurt.

"Bleiben Sie zurück, Sie serbischen Dreck! (Stay back, you Serb filth!)"

The shots echoed away.

"It's starting to fall apart. We don't have much time." Lucy was beginning to get worried.

Lucy saw Anna's dog Max run by. It seemed that Miss. Wolff had released him from the kennel in the baggage car.

Lucy saw Whitney turn from the window and start walking toward the baggage car. He caught up and fell in beside her.

"Mr. Whitney, I'm a businesswoman, as you know, and I have a business proposition for you."

* * *

Heather, Charlie, and the others burst out onto the streets of Belgrade from the town bridge just aft of the third building. They looked at the rioting and marching of Serbian troops.

"The men are going crazy!" Charlie exclaimed. He saw a Serbian colonel chugging forward along the pavement, escorting two ladies. "Colonel! The train station?"

The man stared at his bedraggled state. "Yes, sir...there is a station all the way forward. This way. I'll lead you!"

Heather grabbed his hand and they sprinted past the colonel, with Shermy and Franklin close behind.

Incredibly, a band was playing _Czardas_. Heather, Charlie, and the others ran by.

"Music to drown by. Now I know I'm in Serbia," Shermy commented.

Water poured like a spillway over the forward railing on a U-boat. Whitney and his team were loading the guns at the Belgrade Glavna railway station.

There were men waiting in collapsibles, or Engelhardt boats, including two which were stored on the docks.

The crowd there was sparse, with most people still aft. Lucy slipped her hand out of the pocket of her overcoat and into the waist pocket of Whitney's green coat, leaving the stacks of bills there. "So, we have an understanding then?"

Whitney nodded curtly. "As you've said."

Lucy, satisfied, stepped back. She found himself waiting next to George Abbot. Abbot did not meet her eyes, nor anyone's. Schroeder came up to Lucy at that moment. "I've found him. He's just over on the platform. With her."

"Anybody? Anyone staying?" Whitney glanced at Lucy. "Anyone else, then?"

Lucy looked longingly at her escape...her moment had arrived. "God dang it to heck! Come on."

She and Schroeder headed for the rear platform, taking a shortcut through the terminal.

Back in England, David Lloyd George, seeing his opportunity, stepped quickly into a PT boat. He stared straight ahead, not meeting Brown's eyes.

Brown stared at George. "Take them down."

* * *

On the platform, Georgevitch was getting people into a Serbian army train. He kept his pistol in his hand at that point. Twenty miles away, the sea was waving outside the doors and windows of a battleship. They could hear the roar of cannons cascading in the battle.

"Мушкарци молим. Мушкарци само. Корак назад, госпођице. (Men please. Men only. Step back, miss.)"

Even with Heather's arms wrapped around him, Charlie was shivering in the cold. Near him, a woman with two young daughters looked into the eyes of a husband she knew she might not see again.

"Довиђења за мало ... само мало. (Good-bye for a little while...only for a little while.)" He spoke to his two little girls. "Иди са мумије. (Go with mummy.)" The man stumbled to the train with several others, hiding her tears from them. Beneath the false good cheer, the man was choked with emotion. "Hold mummy's hand and be a good girl. That's right."

Some of the women were stoic, others were overwhelmed by emotion and had to be helped into the army trains. A man scribbled a note and handed it to a woman who was about to board one that was evacuating passengers. "Молим вас ово мојој жени у Софији, Бугарска. (Please get this to my wife in Sofia, Bulgaria.)"

Heather looked at Shermy and Franklin. "You better check the other side for the Orient Express."

They nodded and ran off, searching for a way around the terminal.

"I'm not going without you." Charlie was insistent.

"Get in the train, Charlie."

Lucy walked up just then. "Yes. Get in the train, Charlie."

He was shocked to see her. He stepped instinctively to Heather. Lucy looked at him, standing there shivering in his wet suit and shoes, a shocking display in 1914.

"My God, look at you." She took off her fur coat. "Here, put this on."

He numbly shrugged into it. She was doing it for modesty, not the cold.

"Брзо, мушкарци. Корак у возу. Пожури, молим те! (Quickly, men. Step into the train. Hurry, please!)"

"Go on. I'll get the next one." Heather tried to push Charlie toward the train.

"No. Not without you!"

He didn't even care that Lucy was standing right there. She saw the emotion between Heather and Charlie, and her jaw clenched. But then she leaned close to him and said, in a low voice, "Look, I have an arrangement with Mr. Whitney on the other train. Heather and I can leave safely. Both of us."

Heather smiled reassuringly. "I'll be all right. Hurry up so we can get going...we got our own train to catch."

"Get in...hurry up, it's almost full." Lucy prodded him forward.

Georgevitch grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the army train. He reached out for Heather and his fingers brushed hers for a moment. Then he found herself stepping down into the army train. It was all a rush and blur.

"Све на броду! (All aboard!)"

The two men watched at the window as the train began to leave.

Lucy spoke to Heather in a low voice. "You're a good liar."

"Almost as good as you."

"I always win, Heather. One way or another." She looked at her, smiling.

Heather knew she was screwed. She looked back at Charlie, not wanting to waste a second of her last view of him.

Charlie's perception seemed to be in slow motion. The locomotive going through the railway junction as the men started to look back. All sound going away...Georgevitch giving orders...his lips moving...but Charlie heard only the blood pounding in his ears...this could not be happening...a rocket burst above in slow motion, outlining Heather in a halo of light...Charlie's hair blowing in slow motion as he looked back at her, moving away from her...he saw her hand trembling, the tears at the corners of her eyes, and could not believe the unbearable pain he was feeling.

Charlie was still staring back, tears pouring down his face.

Suddenly, he was moving. He lunged across the man next to him. Reached the window, climbing it...hurling himself out of the train to the pole of the platform, catching it, and scrambling over the pavement. The Serbian army train continued down. But Charlie was back in Belgrade.

"No, Charlie! No!" Heather spun from the platform, running for the nearest way down to the street.

Van Pelt, too, had seen him jump. He was willing to die for this girl, this gutter scum. He was overwhelmed by a rage so all consuming it eclipsed all thought.

Heather banged through the doors to the terminal and sprinted down the hall. She saw him coming into the entrance hall, running toward him, Lucy's long coat flying out behind him as she ran.

They met at the bottom of the stairs, and collided in an embrace.

"Charlie, Charlie, you're so stupid, you're such an idiot—" And all the while has was kissing him and holding him as tightly as he could.

"You jump, I jump, right?"

"Right."

Van Pelt came in and ran to the railing. Looking down, he saw them locked in their embrace. Schroeder came up behind Lucy and put a restraining hand on her, but Lucy whipped around, grabbing the pistol from Schroeder's waistband in one cobra-fast move.

She ran along the rail and down the stairs. As she reached the landing above them she raised the gun. Screaming in rage, she fired.

The carved handle at the foot of the center railing exploded. Heather pulled Charlie toward the stairs going down to the next level. Lucy fired again, running down the steps toward them. A bullet blew a divet out of the oak paneling behind Heather's head as she pulled Charlie out the door.

Van Pelt stepped on the skittering head of the statue and went sprawling. The gun clattered across the marble floor. She got up, and reeling drunkenly went over to retrieve it.

The train yard near the station was packed with wagons. Heather and Charlie came down the stairs two at a time and ran straight into the train yard, fording across the street to where the floor sloped up, until they reached dry footing at the entrance to the yard.

Van Pelt reeled down the stairs in time to see Heather and Charlie running through the yard toward the Danube river. She fired twice. Big gouts of spray near them, but he was not a great shot.

The water boiled up around her feet and she retreated up the dock a couple of steps. Around her the battleships groaned and creaked.

Lucy called to them. "Enjoy your time together!"

Schroeder arrived next to her along with Kronos and Kahina in their private car pulled by a single locomotive. Lucy suddenly remembered something and started to laugh.

"What could possibly be funny?"

"I put the egg in my coat pocket. And I put my coat...on him." She turned to Schroeder with a sickly expression, her eyes glittering. "I give it to you...if you can get it."

She handed Schroeder the pistol and threw him off the coach. Schroeder thought about it...then slogged into the Danube. The ice water was up to his waist as he crossed the pool to the other side.

Schroeder moved among the trees, searching...listening...his eyes tracking rapidly. It was a forest of tress, and they could be anywhere. A silver bullet rolled downhill, bumping into tables and pillars.

He glanced behind him. The tide was following him into the other, advancing in a hundred foot wide tide. The U-boat was now a roiling lake, and the battleship was submerged past the bow. Monstrous groans echoed through the ship.

Heather and Charlie crouched behind a tree, somewhere in the middle of the isle. They saw the war advancing toward them, swirling over the floor. They crawled ahead of it to the next row of trees.

Heather whispered to Charlie. "Stay here."

She moved off as Schroeder moved over one row and looked along the trees. Nothing.

The battleships groaned and creaked. He moved another row.

An armored truck five feet tall and full of stacks of heavy artillery started to roll down the aisle between trees.

The truck rolled toward Charlie. It hit a tree and the stacks of guns toppled out, exploding across the ground and showering him.

He scrambled out of the way and Schroeder spun, seeing him. He moved rapidly toward him, keeping the gun aimed.

That was when Heather tackled him from the side. They slammed together into a table, crashing over it, and toppling to the floor. They landed in the water, which was flowing rapidly between the tables.

Heather and Schroeder grappled in the icy water. Heather jammed her knee down on Schroeder's hand, breaking his grip on the pistol, and kicked it away. Schroeder scrambled up and lunged at her, but Heather gut punched him right in the solar plexus, doubling him over.

"Compliments of the Ohio Dawsons."

She grabbed Schroeder and slammed him into an ornate column. Schroeder dropped to the Danube with a splash, stunned.

"Let's go." Heather took Charlie's hand and led him onward.

Heather and Charlie ran...uphill...entering the Romanian border. Behind them the battleships had become islands in a lake...and the far end of a submarine was flooded up to the ceiling.

Schroeder got up and looked around for his gun. He pulled it up out of the water and waded after them.

They ran through the forest, and Charlie spotted the trail. He started up and Heather grabbed his hand. She led him down.

They crouched together on the landing as Schroeder ran past them. Assuming they had gone up the trail, he clomped up his feet two at a time.

They waited for the footsteps to recede. There was a long, creaking groan from a flamethrower nearby. Then they heard it...a crying child behind them. They went down a few steps to look along the next batch of trees.

The forest was aflame about a foot deep. Standing against the gorse bush, about fifty feet away, was a little boy, about three. The fire swirled around his legs and he was wailing.

"We can't leave him." Charlie stared at the child

Heather nodded and they left the promise of escape up the trail to run to the child. Heather scooped up the kid and they ran back to the trail, but a torrent of flamethrowers came pouring down the trail like a rapids. In seconds it was too powerful for them to go against.

"Come on!"

Charging the other way down the burning forest, they blasted up ash with each footstep. At the end of the hall were heavy twin trees. As Heather approached them, she saw flames spraying through the gap between the trees right up to the ceiling. The trees groaned and started to burn under the flames of pressure.

"Back! Go back!"

Charlie pivoted and ran back the way they came, taking a turn into a cross-section. A man was coming the other way. He saw the boy in Heather's arms and cried out, grabbing him away from Heather. He started cursing him in Slavic. He ran on with the boy—

"No! Not that way! Come back!"

The double trees blasted to smithereens. A wall of tanks thundered into the forest. The father and child disappeared instantly.

Heather and Charlie ran as a wave of troops, tanks and trucks blasted around the corner, foaming from sky to ground. It gained on them like a locomotive. They made it to a gate going into Belgrade.

Heather and Charlie pounded up the trail as red flames swirled up behind them. A steel gate blocked the entrance back into Belgrade. Heather slammed against the gate, gripping the bars.

A terrified soldier standing guard on the landing above turned to run at the sight of the war machines thundering up the trail.

"Wait! Wait! Help us! Unlock the gate."

The soldier ran on. The flamethrowers welled up around Heather and Charlie, pouring through the gate and slamming them against it. In seconds the war machines were a mile away.

"Help us! Please!"

The soldier stopped and looked back. He saw Heather and Charlie at the gate, their arms reaching through...saw the war artillery pouring through the gate onto the entrance.

"Шта дођавола? (What the heck?!)"

He ran back, slogging against the current. He pulled a key ring from his belt and struggled to unlock the padlock as the fire fountained up around them.

The sun started to go down and the entrance was plunged into darkness.

The German war machines reached over the lock and he was doing it by feel.

"Come on! Come on!" Heather and Charlie were right up against the gates.

Suddenly a German tank pushed the gate open. The force of the tank pushed them through. They made it to the streets on the other side of the gate and followed the man back to the capital of Serbia.


	9. L'automne

July 27, 1914

Lucy came reeling out of the _Saturn_, looking wild-eyed. She lurched down the platform toward Belgrade Glavna station. Waltz music wafted over the building. Somewhere a band was playing.

François was crying alone in his mother's arms. He looked up at Lucy beseechingly. Lucy moved on without a glance back...reaching a large crowd clustered around the restaurant car, just before the station. He saw Tyler and a number of crewmen struggling to drag the crate of guns to the platform, with no luck.

Lucy pushed forward, trying to signal Tyler, but the young man ignored her. Nearby, Shermy and Franklin were being pushed forward by the crowd behind. Vesna pushed them back, getting Salko to help her. She brandished a sword from it's sheath, waving it in the air, yelling for the crowd to stay back.

Salko, with a group of men, was trying to get munitions cache out from the baggage car. They slid it down a trolley leaned against the car.

"Држите га! Држите га! (Hold it! Hold it!)"

The weight of the crate snapped the trolley's wheels and it crashed to the platform, upside down. Two members of Mahmud Makhta's harem, Yasmin and Hadija, jumped back as the boat nearly hit them.

* * *

Heather and Charlie ran up seemingly endless streets as the army fought and torqued around them.

Tyler, at the train, was no longer in control. The crowd was threatening to rush him. They pushed and jostled, yelling and shouting at the nationalists. The pressure from behind pushed them forward, and one guy fell off the edge of the platform onto the rails less than ten feet below.

"Give us a chance to live, you limey bastards!" Shermy shouted.

Tyler fired his Webley twice in the air, then pointed it at the crowd.

"I'll shoot any man who tries to get past me."

Lucy stepped up to him. "We had a deal, damn you."

Tyler pushed her back, pointing the pistol at Lucy.

"Get back!"

Alexei Dolnikov, who was next to Shermy rushed forward, and Shermy was shoved from behind. Tyler shot Alexei, and seeing Shermy coming forward, put a bullet into his chest.

Shermy collapsed, and Franklin grabbed him, holding him in his arms as his blood flowed out over the platform.

Tyler turned to Milos and saluted smartly. Then he put the pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger. He dropped like a puppet with the strings cut and toppled over the edge of the platform into the tracks only a few feet below.

Lucy stared in horror at Tyler's body bobbing in the pavement. The money floated out of the pocket of his green coat, the bills spreading across the rails.

The crew rushed to get the last few guns from the baggage car.

Salko called above the confusion. "Свако боравка на броду? (Anyone staying aboard?)"

François was still crying in his mother's arms. Lucy scooped him up and ran forward, cradling him in her arms.

Lucy forced her way through the crowd. "Here's a child! I've got a child!" He spoke to Salko. "Please...I'm all she has in the world."

Salko nodded curtly and pushed him into a bench. He spun with his gun, brandishing it in the air to keep the other men back. Lucy got into the bench, holding the little boy. He took a seat with the Madame Boutarel.

"There, there."

* * *

Robert Cath stood in front of the tracks, staring at the large sky above him. The fire was still going in the forest.

The area was empty except for Cath. His Swan Vestas matchbox fell off his pocket. Behind him, Heather and Charlie ran into the street, out of breath and soaked with sweat. They ran through, toward a revolving door...then Charlie recognized him. He saw that he had made it all the way from the detached sleeping cars at some point.

"Won't you even make a try for it, Mr. Cath?"

A tear rolled down his cheek. "I'm sorry that peace has gone from this world today, young Charlie."

Heather spoke to him. "It's going fast...we've gotta keep moving."

A familiar Sopwith Camel came from the sky, landing near the three and its pilot stepped out. "Need a ride, Charlie?"

Charlie hugged him. "Thank you, Snoopy."

Heather pulled him away, hopped in the rear gunner's seat and took off into the sky.

* * *

The band finished the waltz. A bandleader looked at the orchestra members. "Right, that's it then."

They left him, walking forward along the platform. Anna put her violin to her chin and bowed the first notes of Songe d'Automne. One by one the band members turned, hearing the lonely melody.

Without a word they walked back and took their places. They joined in with Hartley, filling out the sound so that it reached all over the ship on that still night. A few passengers began to sing along with another song: "If in my dreams I be, nearer my God to thee..."

An Australian gunman pulled off his vest and caught up to Captain Roy Brown as he walked around the airfield. He proffered it, but Brown seemed to stare through him. Without a word he turned and went onto the hangar bay. He entered the enclosed hanger and closed the door. He was alone, surrounded by the gleaming brass Sopwith planes. He seemed to inwardly collapse.

In a Serbian pub, Cath stood like a statue. He pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time. Then he opened the face of a mantel clock and adjusted it to the correct time: 2:12 AM. Everything had to be correct.

In Kronos' private car, water swirled in from the Danube river. Charlie's paintings were submerged. The Franz von Stuck painting "Sin" transformed under the water's surface. Marc's colors ran. Kilmt's futurist movement came to life.

Two figures lay side by side, fully clothed, on a table in the restaurant car. Elderly Vassili Alexandrovitch and Tatiana Obolensky stared at the ceiling, holding hands like young lovers. War poured into the station through a doorway. Men swirled around the car, two feet deep and moving fast.

In a third class compartment somewhere in the bowels of the Nord Express, the young Irish mother, who had earlier been stoically waiting at the station in Bucharest, was tucking her two young children into bed. She pulled up the covers, making sure they were all warm and cozy. She lay down with them on the bed, speaking soothingly and holding them.

A wave traveled up the U-boat as it's target sank into the water.

On the dockside, the water picked up a row boat. Working frantically, the men tried to detach it from the falls so the war machines wouldn't crush it. Vesna handed Salko a pocketknife and he sawed furiously at the ropes as the water swirled around his legs. The boat, still upside down, was swept off the dock. Men started diving in, swimming to stay with it.

In the bench chair, Lucy sat next to the Boutarels, whom she had completely forgotten. He watched the men as they worked, scrambling to get the guns out from the baggage car so they could destroy the German rivals.

Franklin removed the pockets from Shermy's body and struggled to put it on as the men crowded around him.

Captain Brown, standing near the hangar, watched the black sky climbing the windows of the enclosed hangar. He had the stricken expression of a damned soul on Judgment Day. The superstructure burst suddenly and a wall of bullets and firepower edged with shards of glass slammed into Brown. He disappeared in a vortex of explosions.

The rowboat was hit by a bomb as its bow plunged suddenly. It partially swamped the boat, washing it along the docks. Over a hundred Serbs were plunged to their deaths and the area around the train became a frenzy of rioting, screaming Serbian nationalists.

As Vesna and Salko were trying to climb onto the locomotive, Lucy grabbed the coal spade like a trouper and hit them in the face, pushing them back into the platform. "Get back! You'll swamp us!"

Franklin, running for his life, got swirled under a boat. The ropes and pulleys tangled around him as the boat went under the Sava river, and he was dragged down. Underwater he struggled to free himself, and then kicked back to the surface. He surfaced, gasping for air in the freezing water.

Anna saw the Serbs rolling rapidly up the platform toward them. She held the last note of the hymn in a sustain, and then lowered her violin, pulling out a gun. "Gentlemen, it has been a privilege playing with you tonight, but I must fight for my country."


	10. Snoopy Battles the Baron

Snoopy, Heather and Charlie flew out of the forest into a dense air battle. Snoopy pushed his way to the wingspan and looked at the state of his plane. A blood red Fokker Triplane was shooting down all the best fighters and there was chaos everywhere. Heather helped Charlie put his safety belt on. Planes streamed around them, zooming and zipping.

"Okay...we keep moving forward. We have to stay on the tail of that Red Baron guy as long as possible."

They pushed their way to the Red Baron.

* * *

The Orient Express was whirled like a leaf in the currents around the freedom fighters. It slammed against the side of the signals.

Lucy shouted to the engineer in the locomotive. "Keep shoveling, you blockhead!"

Franklin was drawn up against the undercarriage of the restaurant car vent as war machines poured through it. The force of tons of men roaring down into the train trapped him against it, and he was dragged down under the wheels as the train picked up speed. He struggled to free himself but could not.

Suddenly, there was a concussion deep in the bowels of the train as a bomb exploded and a blast of hot iron made a small bump in the tracks, ejecting Franklin. He surfaced in a roar of smoke and kept running.

* * *

Snoopy, Heather and Charlie clambered the Sopwith Camel over the Airship R23. Then, using all his strength, he lowered the plane toward the anti-aircraft gun below, holding on with one hand. He dangled, then fell. Heather ducked down behind him.

They joined a fleet of aeroplanes literally flying and scrambling over each other to attack the enemy fighters...the only way of doing so.

Seeing that the idea of following the stars were impossible, Snoopy climbed the plane over the Airship R26 and helped Charlie aim the rear gunner. He lowered the plane again, and Charlie fell in a heap. Woodstock's homemade plane, now three sheets to the wind, happened to be connected to the Camel by means of a red rubber band. He hauled Charlie to his feet. Heather dropped down, and the three of them pushed through the crowd of planes across the Balkan territory. Near them, at the burning airships, people were jumping into the water and the ground in parachutes or not at all.

The plane swayed and lurched. The man ahead of Snoopy was flying his Sopwith Pup like a zombie. "Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death—"

"You wanna walk a little faster through that valley, fella?"

* * *

The lift cables along the wings of a Junkers J.I snapped, and they lashed like steel whips down into ground. Lucy and Anna watched as the Junkers J.I toppled from the sky. Falling through the station roof, it fell into the rails with a tremendous crash. People running underneath it disappeared in an instant.

Franklin, a few feet away, was hurled back by a huge explosion. He came up, gasping...still running. The water pouring into the open end of the HMS _Irresistible_ in several swimmers. The funnel sank, disappearing, but hundreds of tons of water poured down through the thirty-foot hole where the funnel stood, thundering down into the belly of the ship. A whirlpool formed, a hole in the ocean, like an enormous toilet flush. William Thomas Clegg, swam in a frenzy as the vortex drew him in. He was sucked down like a spider going down a drain.

Franklin, nearby, ran like hell as more people were killed behind him. He managed to get clear. He was going to live no matter what it took.

Water roared through the doors and windows of sinking battle ships, cascading down the stairs like a rapids. Douglas Lionel Dent was swept down the steel steps to Deck 3, which was already flooded...a roiling vortex. He grabbed the railing at the bottom of the staircase and wrapped his arms around it.

Dent looked up in time to see the thirty-foot steel hull explode inward with the wave of water washing over it, no thanks to a naval mine. A Niagara of seawater thundered down into the room, blasting through the opulence. It was the Armageddon of elegance.

The flooding of the battleships and submarines was horrific. Walls and doors were splintered like kindling. Water roared down corridors with pile-driver force.

The Cartmell family was in Bucharest, jammed against a locked gate, like Heather and Charlie were. War machines boiled up the alley behind them. Eudora Cartmell shook the gate futilely, shouting for help. Lila wailed as the solders boiled up around them all.

* * *

Snoopy, Charlie and Heather struggled to climb the sky as the plane tilted. One of Woodstock's friends, a drunk Bill, put a hand squarely on Charlie's butt and shoved him up onto the cockpit. "Sorry, sir!"

Hundreds of planes were already shot down, and more were pouring up every second. Heather and Charlie clung together as Snoopy struggled the Camel across the tilting sky.

As Richtofen's "Flying Circus" flew down, Snoopy's plane rose. In a Sopwith Tabloid, which was just off the other side, the pilot gaped as Snoopy and the Baron rose up to the sky like great birds.

People were jumping from the shot down planes, burning airships, the doors of a destroyed ground truck. Some landed in the water via parachutes and some were hurt or killed.

On the Sopwith Camel, Snoopy, Heather and Charlie struggled up as the Baron's height increased. Hundreds of planes, clinging to every enemy fighter, huddled on their knees around the throttle of the cockpits, the pilots had their voices raised in prayer. They were praying, sobbing, or just staring at nothing, their minds blank with killing the enemy.

Pulling himself from handhold to handhold, Heather tugged Charlie along the rear gun. "Come on, Charlie. We can't expect Snoopy to do all the work for us."

They struggled on, pushing through the zooming planes. A man in a Nieuport 17 lost his footing ahead and slid toward them. Heather helped him up.

The Red Baron was twenty hundred feet above the ground and rising faster.

Heather and Charlie made it to the rear cockpit, right at the base of the tail. They gripped the framework, jammed in between the rear gun. It felt like the spot where Heather pulled him back onto the train, just four nights...and a lifetime...ago.

"Heather, this is like when we first met."

Above the gunshots and the noises, Snoopy's voice carried, cracking with emotion. "...and I saw new heavens and a new earth. The former heavens and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no longer."

The lights flickered, threatening to go out. Charlie gripped Heather as Snoopy lifted the plane into a night sky ablaze with stars.

"I also saw a new Jerusalem, the holy city coming down out of heaven from God, beautiful as a bride prepared to meet her husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne ring out; this is God's dwelling among men. He shall dwell with them and they shall be His people and He shall be their God, who is always with them."

Charlie stared about him at the faces of the doomed. Near them were Snoopy's bird friends, clinging together stoically on the red rubber band. Woodstock looked at him briefly, and his eyes were infinitely sad.

Charlie saw a young mother in his mind, clutching her five-year-old son, who was crying in terror.

"Shh. Don't cry. It'll be over soon, darling. It'll all be over soon."

"He shall wipe every tear from their eyes. And there shall be no more death or mourning, crying out or pain, for the former world has passed away."

As the planes tilted further everything not in the battle shifted.

Downdrafts burst open in the air, showering the sky with tons of smog. A bird slid across the sky, crashing into a Sopwith Dolphin. Flocks of hawks tumbled across the wings of a Fokker E. III.

On the platform of Belgrade Glavna station, passengers lost their grips and slid down the pavement like a bobsled run, hundreds of feet before they hit the track by the running and kicking men. Linus and Rerun van Pelt, Charlie's friend and Lucy's younger brothers, slipped as he struggled along the platform to the train, and slid away screaming.

The two planes were one hundred feet above sea level and rising. Injured or wounded pilots leapt from the falling planes, fell screaming, and hit the water like mortar rounds. A man fell from the Airship R29, hitting the wooden hub of the engine propellers with a sickening smack.

Pilots on both sides looked up and saw the dogfight towering over them like a monolith, the baron and the beagle rising against the stars. One hundred ten feet. One hundred twenty.

In a Sopwith Three-seater, a pilot jumped as it crashed into a Fokker Eindecker. He fell seemingly forever, right past one of the giant tanks. The planes rushed up.

* * *

Sally listened as the sounds of the war and the screaming people came across the approaching bridge.

The Orient Express' lights were blazing, reflecting in the still ground and water. Richtofhen's triplane was high in the air, angled up over forty-five degrees. Snoopy's plane was one hundred fifty feet above the ground. Over a thousand fighter planes flew all over the sky, looking from a distance like a swarm of bees.

The image was shocking, unbelievable, unthinkable. Sally stared at the spectacle, unable to frame it, or put it into any proportion.

"God almighty," Peppermint Patty whispered.

The restaurant car's lights flickered.

* * *

In darkness a submarine captain hung onto a pipe at the periscope. Around him men climbed through tilted cyclopean machines with electric hand torches. It was a black hell of breaking pipes, spraying water, and groaning machinery threatening to tear right out of its bedplates.

Water sprayed down, hitting the breaker panel, but the captain would not leave his post. The breakers kicked. He slammed them in again and there was a blast of light. Something melted, and arcing filled the current control with nightmarish light.

The sun went down all over the place. The dogfight became a vast, black silhouette against the stars.

In the PT boat, David Lloyd George had his back to the battle going on, unable to watch his country die. He was catatonic with remorse, his mind overloaded. He could avert his eyes, but he couldn't block out the sounds of dying people and machinery.

A loud, cracking report came across the sky.

* * *

Near the old railway bridge a man clutched the railing. He stared down as the gunshots fired between his feet. A yawning chasm opened with a thunder of breaking steel.

Richtofhen was clutching the throttle in the cockpit of the Fokker Triplane. He watched in horror as the plane's structure was riddled with bullets from Snoopy. He gaped down into a widening maw, seeing straight down into the bowels of the railway bridge, amid a booming concussion like the sound of artillery. The passengers locked in the dining car looked at the widening crevasse like dolls.

The rear wings on the triplane parted and snapped across the mid-section like whips, ripping off the framework and ventilators. He was hit by the top wings and swept into the crevasse. The middle wings smashed the cockpit next to Richtofhen, and the final wings ripped free. He fell backward with a snapped neck.

Fires, explosions, and sparks lit the burning triplane as it fell down through nine stories to the bridge. The train poured onto the bridge.

It was a thundering black hell. The passengers on the mini train screamed as the monstrous triplane came upon them, steel frames burning and twisting like taffy. Their torches illuminated the roaring, flaming demon of the underworld as it raced at them through the sky. Trying to move faster, the train overtook the bridge in seconds.

The Red Baron's Fokker Triplane, almost four hundred feet in the sky, fell and crashed into the railway bridge. In the restaurant car everyone screamed as they felt themselves plummeting. The explosion went up like the roar of fans at a baseball stadium when a run was scored.

Swimming in the water directly under the bridge, a few unfortunate creatures of the river shrieked as they saw the framework of the bridge collapsing down on them like God's boot heel. The massive steel beam fell back almost level, thundering down into the river, and pushing out a mighty wave of displaced water.

Heather and Charlie struggled to hold onto the Camel's wooden frame. They felt the plane seemingly right itself. Snoopy, who was praying thought it was salvation.

"We're saved!"

Heather looked at Charlie and shook her head, grimly.

Then the horrible mechanics played out. Wrecked by the awesome explosion of the inflamed triplane, the broken halves of the bridge tilted up rapidly. They felt the rush of ascent as the fantail of the plane angled up again. Everyone was clinging to the throttle, wings, and tail...anything to keep from sliding as the plane lifted.

The Sopwith Camel went up and up, past forty-five degrees, then past sixty.

The plane started to burn, sliding out of control. They skidded down the air, screaming and flailing to grab onto something. They wrenched other planes loose, and were shot down as well. There was a pile-up of wrecked enemy planes in the grounds. The red rubber band holding the homemade plane snapped and Woodstock's bird friends fell one by one.

"We have to move!" Heather shouted. She climbed over the aileron, and reached back for Charlie. He was terrified to move. She grabbed his hand. "Come on! I've got you! I won't let go."

Heather pulled him over the aileron. It felt like the same place she pulled him onto the rear platform four nights earlier, going to other direction. She got over just as the tail was going horizontal, and the plane. Heather gripped him fiercely.

The plane was now straight up in the air...a burning comet standing against the stars. It hung there like that for a long grace note, its buoyancy stable.

Charlie lay on the tail, looking down fifteen stories to the boiling sea at the base of the destroyed bridge. Pilots near them, who didn't climb over, hung from the shot down planes, their legs dangling over the long drop. They fell one by one, plummeting down the vertical face of the river. Some of them bounced horribly off tails and wings.

Heather and Charlie lay side by side on what was the vertical face of the rear wings, gripping the tail rudder, which was now horizontal. Just beneath their feet was the Royal Flying Corps logo emblazoned on each side of the plane.

Charlie stared down, terrified, at the black ocean waiting below to claim them. Heather looked to his left, and saw Woodstock, crouching on the tail rudder, holding onto the railing. It was a surreal moment.

Woodstock nodded a greeting. "Heck of a night."

The final relentless plunge began as the motor overheated. Looking down a hundred feet to the water, it dropped like an elevator with Heather and Charlie.

Heather was talking fast. "Take a deep breath and hold it right before we go into the water. The plane might suck us down. Kick for the surface and keep kicking. Don't let go of my hand. We're gonna make it, Charlie. Trust me."

She stared at the water coming up at them, and gripped his hand harder.

"I trust you."

Below them, the body of the plane was burning up in flames. The plunge gathered speed...the surface was about engulf the propeller, and then the whole body.

The Sopwith Camel descended into the black river. Snoopy activated the parachute, and the tiny figures of Heather and Charlie vanished under the water.

Where the bridge had stood, now there was nothing. Only the black river and a gorge with railway tracks.


	11. Death of Heather

Snoopy whirled and spun in the parachute, Woodstock as limp as a doll, the two of them struggling spasmodically, as the wind blew them off into the distance. Off they flew, never to be seen again.

Heather kicked hard for the surface...holding tightly to Charlie, pulling him up.

At the surface was a roiling chaos of screaming, thrashing pilots from fallen planes, balloons and airships. Over a hundred people were now floating where the air battle took place. Some were stunned, gasping for breath. Others were crying, praying, moaning, shouting...screaming.

Heather and Charlie surfaced among them. They barely had time to gasp for air before the aviators were clawing at them. People were driven insane by gunshot wounds and the water, ten degrees below freezing, a cold so intense it was indistinguishable from death by fire.

A man pushed Charlie under, trying to climb on top of him...senselessly trying to get out of the water, to climb onto anything. Heather punched him repeatedly, pulling him free.

"Swim, Charlie! Swim!"

He tried, but his strokes were not as effective as hers because of the fur coat. They broke out of the clot of people. She had to get to the nearest shore bank, anything to get him out of the freezing water.

"Keep swimming. Keep moving. Come on, you can do it."

All about them there was a tremendous wailing, screaming and moaning...a chorus of tormented souls. And beyond that...nothing but black water surrounded by Grdelica Gorge and stretching to the horizon. The sense of isolation and hopelessness was overwhelming.

Heather stroked rhythmically, the effort keeping her from freezing. "Head for the shore. Some tree...wood...anything."

"It's so cold."

"I know. I know. Help me, here. Look around."

Her words kept him focused, taking his mind off the wailing around them. Charlie scanned the water, panting, barely able to draw a breath. He turned and screamed.

A devil was right in front of his face. It was pilot of the Nieuport 17, swimming right at him like a sea monster in the darkness, his coal eyes bugging. He motored past him, like he was heading for Kosovo.

Beyond it Charlie saw something in the water.

"What's that?"

Heather saw what he was pointing to, and they made for it together. It was a small shore, intricately carved. She pushed him up and he slithered onto it belly down.

But when Heather tried to get up onto the thing, she tilted and submerged, almost having a broken leg. It was clearly only big enough to support him. She clung to it, close to her, keeping her injured body out of the water as best she could.

Their breath floated around them in a cloud as they panted from the exertion. A German swam toward them, homing in on the small shore. Heather warned him back.

"It's just enough for this boy...you'll go under."

"Lassen Sie mich wenigstens versuchen, oder ich werde bald sterben. (Let me try at least, or I'll die soon.)"

"You'll die quicker if you come any closer."

"Ja, ich sehe. Viel Glück für Sie dann. (Yes, I see. Good luck to you then.)" He swam off. "Gott segne. (God bless.)"

* * *

The locomotive was overloaded with steam and the coal tender half empty of coal. Anna clung to the sides in the cab. Others, running, were drawn to it as their only hope. Lucy, standing in the cab, slapped the coal spade in the people's faces as a warning.

"Stay back! Keep off! Cut it out right now or I'll pound you!"

Franklin, exhausted and near the limit, made it almost to the locomotive. Lucy clubbed him with the coal spade, cutting open his hair.

"You don't...understand...I have...to get...to Constantinople."

Lucy pointed with the coal spade. "It's that way!"

Franklin tripped, panting, each breath agony. Lucy could see the spirit leave him.

Lucy seemed to move in slow motion, yelling and wielding the coal shovel. A demon in a dress. The image faded to black.

* * *

Heather and Charlie still sat near a chorus of the damned. Heather saw a man nearby, The Red Baron. He was blowing his whistle furiously, knowing the sound would carry over the gorge for miles.

"Someone will come back for us, Charlie. Hold on just a little longer. They had to go away from the crashing and now they'll be coming back."

He nodded, her words helping him. He was shivering uncontrollably, his lips blue and his teeth chattering from the water.

"Thank God for you, Heather."

People were still screaming, calling for.

"Come back! Please! We know you can hear us. For God's sake!"

"Please...help us. Save one life! Save one life!"

* * *

In the locked dining car, Sally had her ears covered against the wailing in the darkness. Rebecca and Sophie sat on the floor, stunned, listening to the sound of war.

"They'll take our land and our children from us, I tell you!" Milos told them.

"Aw, knock it off. You're scaring me. Come on, girls. Pretend your grabbing your oars. Let's go," Peppermint Patty argued. Nobody moved. "Well, come on!"

The passengers wouldn't meet her eyes. They huddled into their ermine wraps.

"I don't understand a one of you. What's the matter with you? It's your men back there! We got plenty of room for more."

"If you don't shut that hole in your face, there'll be one less on this train!" Milos snapped just as Patty hit him in the crotch with his rifle and pushed him out the window.

Sally kept her ears covered and her eyes closed, shutting it all out.

On the other side, Vassili and Tatiana Obolensky sat on the only table remaining that was two chairs empty. They were two hundred yards from the bridge left in the darkness.

"We should do something," Trainmaster Verges said.

Tatiana squeezed Vassili's hand and pleaded to him with her eyes. She was terrified.

"It's out of the question," Vassili told them.

The trainmaster, intimidated by a nobleman, acquiesced. They hunched guiltily, hoping the sound would stop soon.

The Orient Express, carrying thirty people, chugged into the darkness. None of them made a move.

* * *

Heather and Charlie sat under the blazing stars. The water was glassy, with only the faintest undulating swell. Charlie could actually see the stars reflecting on the black mirror of the river.

Heather squeezed the water out of her long dress, tucking in her head around Charlie's legs. She rubbed his arms. Her face was chalk white in the darkness. A low moaning sounded in the darkness around them.

"It's getting quiet," Charlie whispered.

"Just a few more minutes. It'll take them a while to get the recovery group organized..."

Charlie was unmoving, just staring into space. He knew the truth. There wouldn't be anybody finding them. Behind Heather, he saw that Baron Richtofen had stopped moving. He was slumped in the water, looking almost asleep. He had died of his wounds already.

"I don't know about you, but I intend to write a strongly worded letter to the London Times about all this." Heather laughed weakly, but it sounded like a gasp of fear. Charlie found her eyes in the dim light.

"I love you, Heather."

She took his hand. "I love…No...don't say your good-byes, Charlie. Don't you give up. Don't do it."

"I'm so cold."

"You're going to get out of this...you're going to go on, and you're going to find someone to make babies, and watch them grow, and you're going to die an old, old man, warm in your bed. Not here. Not this night. Do you understand me?"

"I can't feel my body."

"Charlie, listen to me. Listen. Winning that ticket was the best thing that ever happened to me." Heather was having trouble getting the breath to speak. "It brought me to you. And I'm thankful, Charlie. I'm thankful." Her voice was trembling with the cold temperature, which was working its way to her heart. But her eyes were unwavering from the wounds. "You must do me this honor...promise me you will survive...that you will never give up...no matter what happens...no matter how hopeless...promise me now, and never let go of that promise."

"I promise."

"Never let go."

"I promise. I will never let go, Heather. I'll never let go."

He gripped her hand and they lay with their heads together. It was quiet now, except for the lapping of the water and whistling of the wind.

* * *

Mustafa Ertuğrul Aker, the impetuous officer of the local Turkish militia, had gotten three rowboats together with his own boat. A demon of energy, he'd had everyone hold the boats together, and was transferring soldiers from the first one into the others, to empty his boat for an attempt of recovering the bodies and their belongings.

As the men stepped gingerly across into the other boats, Ertuğrul saw a shawled figure in too much of a hurry. He ripped the shawl off, and found himself staring into the face of Lothar von Richtofhen. He angrily shoved the stowaway into another boat and turned to his crew of three.

"Sağ, kürekleri adam. (Right, man the oars.)"

The beam of an electric torch played across the water like a searchlight as the Turk's boat came through the water.

The torch illuminated floating debris, the poignant tail of the triplane: a wing, a wooden frame, a wheel from the landing gear, Snoopy's wooden propeller from the Sopwith Camel.

Then, their white lifejackets bobbing in the darkness like signposts, the first bodies came into the torch's beam. The people were dead, some drowned, some were shot, and some killed by the freezing water. Some looked like they could be sleeping. Others stared with frozen eyes at the stars.

Soon bodies were so thick the seamen could not row. They hit the oars on the heads of floating men...a wooden thunk. One of them, Topal Osman, threw up. Ertuğrul saw a tiny photograph of a mother with her arms frozen around her baby from the pocket of a pilot.

It was the worst moment of Ertuğrul's life. "Biz çok uzun süre bekledi. (We waited too long.)"

* * *

Heather and Charlie lay on the black shore. The stars reflected in the millpond surface of the water, and the two of them seemed to be floating in interstellar space. They were absolutely still. Their hands were locked together. Charlie was staring upwards at the canopy of stars wheeling above him. The music was transparent, floating...as the long sleep stole over Charlie, and he felt peace.

Charlie's face was pale, like the faces of the dead. He seemed to be floating in a void. Charlie was in a semi-hallucinatory state. He knew he was dying from a combination of wounds inflicted from the fall, malnutrition and hypothermia. His lips barely moved as he sang a scrap of Heather's song.

"Come Josephine in my flying machine..."

Charlie saw the stars as he'd never seen them. The Milky Way was a glorious band from horizon to horizon.

A shooting star flared...a line of light across the heavens.

Charlie's hair was dusted with frost crystals. His breathing was so shallow, he was almost motionless. His eyes tracked down from the stars to the water.

Seemingly in slow motion, Charlie saw the silhouette of a boat crossing the stars. He saw men in it, rowing so slowly the oars lifted out of the syrupy water, leaving weightless pearls floating in the air. The voices of the men sounded slow and distorted.

Then the lookout flashed his torch toward him, and the light flared across the water, silhouetting the bobbing corpses in between. It flicked past his motionless form and moved on. The boat was fifty feet away from the shore, and moving past him. The men looked away.

Charlie lifted his head to turn to Heather. His hair had frozen to the ground under him.

Charlie's voice was barely audible. "Heather."

He touched her shoulder with his free hand. She didn't respond. Charlie gently turned his face toward her. It was rimed with frost.

She seemed to be sleeping peacefully.

But she was not asleep.

Charlie could only stare at her still face as the realization went through him.

"Oh, Heather."

All hope, will, and spirit left him. He looked at the Turk's boat. It was further away now, the voices fainter; Charlie watched them go.

He closed his eyes. He was so weak, and there just seemed to be no reason to even try.

And then...his eyes snapped open.

He raised his head suddenly, cracking the ice as he ripped his hair off the ground. He called out "Come back!", but his voice was so weak they didn't hear him. The boat was invisible now, the torch light a star impossibly far away. He struggled to draw breath, calling again.

In the boat, Ertuğrul heard nothing behind him. He pointed to something ahead, turning the tiller.

Charlie struggled to move. His hand, he realized, was actually frozen to Heather's. He breathed on it, melting the ice a little, and gently unclasped their hands, breaking away a thin tinkling film.

"I won't let go. I promise."

He pushed her to the river, and she sank into the black water. She seemed to fade out, like a spirit returning to some immaterial plane.

Charlie rolled off the shore and plunged into the icy water. He swam to Richtofen's body and grabbed his whistle. He started to blow the whistle with all the strength in his body. With full energy, he shouted "I am not a Serb!" Its sound slapped across the still water.

In the Turk's boat, Ertuğrul whipped around at the sound of the whistle and the shouting.

Ertuğrul turned the tiller. "Satır geri! Bu şekilde! Çek! (Row back! That way! Pull!)"

Charlie kept blowing as the boat came to him. He was still blowing when Ertuğrul took the whistle from his mouth as they hauled him into the boat. He slipped into unconsciousness, and they scrambled to cover him with blankets.


	12. Constantinople: The Finale

The faces of the saved were solemn as they sat in the restaurant car in the pre-dawn darkness, the open areas lapping quietly around them. In one moment after another, the survivors sat quietly, waiting.

Schmidt was in a trance, just staring and trembling. Lucy sipped from a hip flask offered to him by the chef's apprentice. Sally hugged herself, rocking gently.

In another train, Charlie lay swaddled. Only his face was visible, white as the moon. The man next to him jumped up, pointing and yelling. Soon everyone was looking and shouting excitedly. To Charlie, everything was silent, in slow motion.

Mustafa Ertuğrul lit a green flare and waved it as everyone shouted and cheered. Charlie didn't react. He floated beyond all human emotion.

Golden light washed across the teak, which floated in a calm sea reflecting the rosy sky. All around them, like a flotilla of sailing ships, were army trains. The city of Constantinople was nearby, as the trains moved toward it.

Images dissolved into one another: a station looming, with the letters Sirkeci Station visible on the sign...Charlie watching, rocked by the car, his face blank...the Turks helping survivors out of the former Orient Express to the platform...Sophie and Rebecca crying and hugging each other inside the restaurant car. All was silent, all in slow motion, to Charlie's point of view. There was just music somewhere, so gentle and sad, part elegy, part hymn, part aching song of love lost forever.

The images and music continued...Charlie, outside of time, outside of himself, coming into Sirkeci Station, barely able to stand...Charlie being draped with warm blankets and given hot tea...August Schmidt climbing off. He had the face and eyes of a damned soul.

As Schmidt walked along the hall, guided by a crewman toward the doctor's ward, he passed rows of seated and standing widows. He had to run the gauntlet of their accusing gazes. It was the longest walk of his life. "How could I be betrayed?" he muttered to himself.

It was afternoon. Lucy was searching the faces of passengers lining the platform, looking for Charlie. The terminal of Sirkeci Station was crammed with huddled people, and even the former Orient Express, sat opposite next to an Ottoman military train.

She kept walking toward the end. Seeing Lucy's dress, a Turk approached her. "Sen özlüyorum, buraya sizin insan bulamazsınız. Bu Asya yakasından hepsi bu. (You won't find any of your people back here, miss. It's all from the Asian side.)"

Lucy ignored him and went amongst this wretched group, looking under shawls and blankets at one bleak face after another.

Charlie was sipping hot tea. His eyes focused on her as she approached him. She barely recognized him. He looked like a refugee, his matted hair hanging in his eyes. "Yes, I lived. How awkward for you."

"Charlie...your sister and I have been looking for you—"

He held up his hand, stopping her. "Please don't. Don't talk. Just listen. We will make a deal, since that is something you understand. From this moment you do not exist for me, nor I for you. You shall not see me again. And you will not attempt to find me. In return I will keep my silence. Your actions the past two nights need never come to light, and you will get to keep the honor you have so carefully purchased." He fixed her with a glare as cold and hard as the war which had changed their lives. "Is this in any way unclear?"

After a long pause, Lucy asked, "What do I tell your sister?"

"Tell her that her big brother is going to die fighting in the war for the Ottoman Empire." He stood, turning to the train. Dismissing him. Lucy was stricken with emotion.

"You're precious to me, Charlie Brown."

"Jewels are precious. Good-bye, Mrs. Van Pelt."

In her way, the only way she knew, she truly did love him.

After a moment, she turned and walked away.

That was the last time he ever saw her. She married, of course, and inherited her millions. But a car crash in '29 hit her interests hard, and she was killed in the same accident that year. Her children fought over the scraps of her estate like hyenas, or so he read.

* * *

Charlie stood at the platform of Sirkeci Station, at nine PM on July 28th. He gazed up at the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, looking just as it does today, welcoming him home with its mighty towers. The Hagia Sophia was just as Franklin saw it, so clearly, in his mind.

Later, the Turks disgorged the survivors through the building of the terminal. Over thirty people lined the terminal and filled the surrounding streets. The magnesium flashes of the photographers went off like small bombs, lighting an amazing tableau.

Several hundred police kept the mob back. The terminal was packed with friends and relatives, officials, ambulances, and the press.

Reporters and photographers swarmed everywhere...six feet deep at the foot of the entrance, lining the tops of wagons, cars and trucks...it was the 1914 equivalent of a media circus. They jostled to get close to the survivors, tugging on them as they passed and shouting over each other to ask them questions.

Charlie was covered with a woolen shawl and walking with a group of military Turks. Immigration officers were asking them questions as they came through the station.

"Ad? (Name?)"

"Dawson. Charles M. Dawson."

The officer steered him toward a holding area for processing. Charlie walked forward with the dazed troops. The boom of photographers' magnesium flashes caused them to flinch, and the glare was blinding. There was a sudden disturbance near him as Cath burst through the cordon, running to embrace the lovely Anna, who cried out with joy. The reporters converged on this emotional scene, and flashes exploded.

Charlie used this moment to swap his clothes for a Turkish military uniform and slip away into the crowd of Ottoman solders. He pushed in line with the jostling army, moving with purpose, and none challenged him in the confusion. Up in the sky, he could have sworn to have seen a familiar looking Sopwith Camel piloted by a black and white dog wearing a red scarf, brown goggles and a green helmet with a small canary on the left wing. It made him wonder:

Could he exchange one life for another? A beagle turned into a flying ace. If a not-so-mindless dog could do it, why couldn't he? Was it any more unimaginable than the beginning of World War I?

Charlie Brown walked away, further and further until the flashes and the roar were far behind him, and he was still walking, determined.


End file.
